Tips from the Business of Dentistry Conference

This year’s Business of Dentistry Conference was a big success. With over 20 different Dentrix courses offered, attendees could choose a course that fit their interests and needs. Our most popular Dentrix course, 50 Things You Didn’t Know Dentrix Could Do, featured little-known tips and shortcuts in Dentrix, and received high reviews from those who registered.

Here are a few of the tips from that class that you might not have been aware your software could do:

Dragging and Dropping Appointments from Appointment Book Lists

When you are working from the Appointment List, ASAP List, Unscheduled List, or Pinboard List in the Appointment Book, you can reschedule appointments on those lists by dragging and dropping the appointment from the list to the Appointment Book. Don't spend time recreating appointments. Use the drag and drop feature to clean up your lists, and get patients back on the schedule.

Refreshing Dentrix Reports for Real-Time Information

When you generate a report in Dentrix, the settings and filters you use for the report are stored in the report that is sent to the Batch Processor. However, the actual report data is compiled when you view the report, so if you leave a report in the Batch Processor, you can view updated information for the report every time you preview it.

For example, if you are working on collections and you generate the Provider A/R Totals Report in the morning, you can preview the report and see a list of patients you can contact. As you work with outstanding accounts (entering payments in the Ledger, applying late charges, etc.), you can periodically preview the report again throughout the day to view updated payment and balance information without having to generate the report from scratch each time.

Note: It's still important to clear out your Batch Processor regularly. You can use the same report for a day or two at a time, but it's not a good idea to leave the same report in the Batch Processor for weeks or months.

Printing a Statement Message on a Batch of Billing Statements

When you have a message you want to convey to all of your patients (like upcoming holiday hours or a welcome to a new provider), you can type that note in Dentrix and have it print on all billing statements instead of using stickers or hand-writing notes on individual statements. To print statement messages on billing statements:

1. From the Office Manager, click Reports > Billing. The Billing Statements dialog box appears.
2. Set up your statements as you normally would.
3. Add a message to the statements in the Statement Message field. This statement will print on every billing statement in the batch you generate.

Note: It’s important to be brief in your statement message. This field will allow you to enter up to 600 characters, but if you are sending statements through QuickBill, only the first 150 will be transmitted.

Applying a Tax/Discount in the Ledger

Dentrix makes it easy to apply tax or discounts to individual patients or family accounts. You can select the tax or discount you want to apply and Dentrix will automatically calculate the adjustment amount for you and post it to the Ledger. No more manual calculations!

To apply a tax/discount to a patient or family account:

1. With a patient selected in the Ledger, click Transaction > Tax/Discount. The Enter Tax/Discount dialog box appears.

2. In the Procedure Date column, enter the procedure date of the procedures you're applying the tax or discount to. The date defaults to today's date.
3. From the Tax/Discount Type list, select the type of tax or discount you want to post.
4. Select how you want to apply the tax/discount in the Calculate for group box:
   • Current Patient - Applies the tax/discount to just the patient currently selected in the Ledger.
   • All Family Members - Applies the tax/discount to all family members of the selected patient who have procedures on the selected date. The discount will be listed in the guarantor's Ledger.
   • Selected Procedures - Applies the tax/discount to the procedures you selected in the current patients' Ledger before you opened the Enter Tax/Discount dialog box.
5. Select the Provider that should be attached to this tax/discount.
6. Enter any additional information about the tax or discount in the Notes field, and then click OK to create the adjustment in the Ledger.

Dentrix comes with a few tax/discount types already defined. You can edit these or customize your own. For more information, see the Creating tax and discount types topic in the Dentrix Help.

For more tips about time-saving features in Dentrix, follow our weekly Tip Tuesday blog or “like” us on Facebook. You can also follow us on Pinterest where we’ve set up a collection of boards categorizing past tips.