Managing Unfiled Documents in the Document Center

Scan multiple documents into the Unfiled Documents folder and then assign them sources at a later time.

Updated 6/30/20

It’s Tuesday afternoon, and the mail has just arrived at your office. There are invoices, insurance EOBs, and patient correspondence that need to be sorted and placed into patient files. And you already have a growing pile of new patient information forms, patient receipts, and insurance coverage documents from today’s production that are still waiting to be filed.

So what do you do with all that paper? In a perfect world where you didn’t have any other responsibilities besides handling office paperwork you could organize the documents by patients and insurance companies as they crossed your desk. Then, you could scan pages individually into the Document Center and attach the documents to correct patients and insurance companies in the Document Center.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and you need to be able to quickly scan several documents at once. With Dentrix, you can use a multi-page scanner to scan an entire “in” basket of documents at once. The documents are all placed in the Document Center Unfiled Documents folder, which acts as a catch-all for documents you have scanned but have yet to organize.

Combining Documents

When you use a scanner to enter documents into the Document Center, each page scanned is entered as a separate document in the Unfiled Documents folder. You can combine individual documents from the Unfiled Documents folder easily.

Items in the Unfiled Documents folder are arranged by the date/time you scanned them, and you can select each individual item and preview it so you know which document you’re working with.

Preview the documents and select the documents you want to combine. Then click the Combine Documents button. Click the Document Information button to assign a Document Type, Description, and Note and attach the document to a source following steps outlined above. Then click OK.

Entering Document Information

Once you have combined documents appropriately, you need to enter information about the document so you can find it later. Select the document you want to file and click the Document Information button to open the Document Information dialog box.

Here you have options for creating a document type, adding a description and note, and attaching the document to sources within the Document Center.

First, click the Document Type drop-down list and select the appropriate category or type. Several document types are already created, but you can add, edit, and delete them to fit the needs of your practice. Then, add a description (40 characters or less) of the document for more clarity. If needed, enter a note to include additional information about the document.

Attaching Documents to Sources

Once you have selected a Document Type and entered a description and (optional) note, you can attach the document to document sources. You should attach documents to all the relevant sources so you can access that document when you view the document center by sources other than patients. For example, if you scan an EOB into the Document Center, you should attach it to the patient and the insurance company. Then, if you want to view all the EOBs from that insurance company you can click View > By Insurance Company and view all the documents attached to insurance companies. To attach a document to a source, from the Document Information dialog box (above), click the Modify Attachments button. The Modify Document Attachments dialog box appears.

Click the search button next to the type of source to which you’ll be attaching the document. Select the appropriate source, repeat for all other sources, and click OK. The document will be moved from the Unfiled Documents folder to the source(s) you attached it to.

When you are finished attaching documents to sources, click Close to exit the Modify Document Attachments dialog box, and click OK to exit the Document Information dialog box.

With the Unfiled Documents feature, you can scan individual documents or entire stacks of documents at one time and then organize them and attach them to sources at a later time. The Unfiled Documents feature makes it easy to use the Document Center, and using the Document Center can greatly reduce the amount of paper in the already overcrowded paper files and filing cabinets you’re using now and help to bring your office into the paperless era.


Learn More

Read Stop Scanned Documents from Filling Up Your Hard Drive for advice about managing the size of the documents on your server.

To learn more about using the Unfiled Documents folder, see the Acquiring Unfiled Documents and Entering Document Information topics in Dentrix Help.


By Sean Eyring, Contributing Editor

Originally published in Dentrix Magazine, Winter 2011