Updating fee schedules each year doesn’t have to be stressful.
Updated 11/17/20
It happens every year — you need to update the fee schedules. But it’s tricky work and you have to time it just right. When can you set aside time to sit in front of your computer, enter the fees, and not be interrupted? After all, the pressure is on, and when you click Save those fees go live — so you’ve got to be ready, have all your ducks lined up, and enter the information at just the right time, right? Not necessarily.
Today, we’ll show you how to take the pressure off. Did you know that you can edit the fees in a spreadsheet — like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets — and better yet, you can do it at your leisure and from pretty much anywhere? When the timing is right to “go live” with those new fees, you can upload them into Dentrix from that spreadsheet in just a few mouse clicks!
To get started, first export your current fee schedules and create a spreadsheet.
In Office Manager, click the Maintenance menu, then Reference, and Fee Schedule Maintenance. You can select as many fee schedules as you’d like (hold the CTRL key while you click additional schedules), and click Export.
Follow the prompts and save your export as a spreadsheet file.
Next, open the file in your favorite spreadsheet editor. The nice thing about this particular file is that it contains no personal health information, so you don’t have to worry about loading this file on your personal laptop or an online spreadsheet; however, we don’t recommend doing this with most other information you get from Dentrix.
Then, while you binge-watch your favorite holiday specials at home on your couch, or while you commute to work on the bus or train, you can update the fees with less stress. There’s no pressure in pressing Save because the fees won’t go live yet.
Once your spreadsheet is ready, when you want the new fees to become active (most likely at the start of the new year), open the Fee Schedule Maintenance window again, select a fee schedule, click View/Edit, and click Import.
Select your edited spreadsheet file, and Dentrix will attempt to determine which columns contain the codes and which contain the fees. Be prepared to help it identify those columns, especially if the spreadsheet contains more than one fee schedule.
The fees will upload into the editor. Dentrix will show you the results using red and green colors (red if the fee decreased, green if it increased). Give the results a once-over, and when you are comfortable, click Save.
Once you’ve clicked Save, the new fees are activated in Dentrix.
Learn More
For additional information, read the Exporting Fee Schedules and Importing Fee Schedules topics in Dentrix Help.
By Ryan Beardall, Contributing Editor
