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December 2012

DentaLab NewsDecember 2012
from Mainstreet Systems & Software

FAQ DentaLab News

Soon Coming Your Way

We all have been very lucky to have a number of good-idea folks in the DentaLab user group. Here are some of the new features coming your way that grew out of their suggestions:

  • A new case status for pre-booked cases. Previously you could schedule a case before it arrived at the lab and use one of the memo fields to indicate it was an advance booking, but now there will be an official status for these cases. We have been told that some labs are promoting advance bookings as a component of their personalized service.
  • A new indicator for case communications to have these also appear as case alerts.
  • To help those who will be adjusting their price levels for the upcoming medical device tax, a new report listing the customers assigned to each price level. In addition, the items in the current price level report will be listed in alphabetical name order.

Also in the next release, the home page will feature a dashboard of case-related graphs, three for the current day's work and three with trends for the latest 12 months.

Our Holiday Schedules

This year because Christmas and New Year's Day fall on a Tuesday, we will have two four-day holiday weekends. Our offices will be closed:

December 22 - 25

December 29 - 31 and January 1

We hope that you all will be enjoying this much needed break too and wish you and your families a wonderful holiday season!

Easy, versatile software for the modern dental laboratory.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What are some of the things you do to customize the system?

A: The majority of customization requests we receive are for printed formats, for work tickets, case labels, quality control/feedback forms. But we also have a steady beat of other requests for a variety of purposes. Some are for custom reports to fit the specific information and format labs need for the way they handle cases. Many are for marketing purposes such as integrating DentalRx with their websites, providing surveys to gain feedback from their own customers, responding to requests from large dental practices and organizations.

In addition to the USA, we are now serving labs in eleven other countries so we handle requests for compliance with other governments, special work schedules and incentives, multiple languages and currencies, international communications.

Q: Do we need to setup separate companies if we have some customers that must be taxed and some not, some customers with special prices and some not?

A: No, these reasons do not require a separation of companies. You may want to check with your accountant to determine if there are other reasons for doing this. In QuickBooks, you can indicate which customers are to be taxed as well as the rate and taxing authority. You can also indicate which items are sales taxable and which are not. In DentaLab for QuickBooks, you can setup special price levels by percentage or by item and assign these to specific customers.

With the same look and feel of QuickBooks.

The Best Combinations

As many of you already know, we strive for providing very high quality software at affordable prices. We think this is the best combination for most dental labs. We shy away from the downward spiral of cheap and at the other end of the spectrum, from being only available to those with big budgets.

There are other best combinations when it comes to providing software for a specific industry. Some definitely worth knowing about are these:

  • Software should be responsive to the changing needs of dental labs, whether it be for government compliance, quality assurance, competitive pressures, security of information, training, efficiency....the list goes on and on. It is not a once-and-done project.
  • Software should support both the tried-and-true methods that are valued and will continue as well as new innovations and possibilities.
  • Dental laboratory businesses must balance their own high quality products and services with strong financial management and their software should synchronize both of these to assure accuracy and control.
  • Design and coding are just part of the picture. For software to achieve its best purposes, training, guidance and on-going support must complete the effort.
  • The software devlopment team must encourage and then respond to the ideas, suggestions and feedback from the dental lab team.
  • In addition to providing a solid base of standard applications, software should provide for customization to support unique approaches and business models.


Winning Rave Reviews: Web-based Workflow

Most wise experienced businesses are finding that the best combination is to maintain control and security for the core business information while providing gateways for collecting or providing information via the Internet for specific purposes. The new DQBT web-based workflow app was specifically designed for use with tablets such as the Androids and the Apple IPads. It is designed to track workflow in the dental lab for a variety of purposes in a convenient inexpensive way. You can choose to have it used by all or selected technicians, to have it track workflow all the time or just for occasional timings, to use it as an inexpensive extra station to manage cases.

We've been getting excellent reviews from the beta-testers on the ease of use and benefits of this app. Here's what it is all about.

For all levels of authorization in DentaLab for QuickBooks, it will display for a selected date or date range:

  • Scheduled Assigned Case Items by Technician
  • Scheduled Case Items by Work Center
  • Preferences by Item
  • Preferences by Work Center
  • Case Communications
  • Case Enclosures
  • Case Plan
  • Technician Notes, including an opportunity to view, add and edit these notes
  • Case-Related Images, either scanned in DQB or sent by the dental office, with ability to review all images by scrolling and to view image in full screen
  • Calendar Schedules, showing scheduled and completed units with a link to the specific cases
  • Master Schedule – screen allows to review in calendar mode scheduling for selected Work Center
  • Weekly Schedule – allows to review scheduling of all Work Centers for selected week and ability to navigate to previous and next weeks

With a simple touch, you can start, pause or mark a case item completed. The system will record the status, date and time and tally timings. You can also simply view the workflow.

For those with manager-level authorization, this app will also provide:

  • Manager Review/Edit, including correction of input errors not immediately taken care of by technicians,view/edit of case item status and timings. One technician or all technicians can be selected.
  • Case Item Analysis, to include all items started and completed in a selected range of dates with quantities, total and average timings.

Technical recommendations and requirements are:

  • 10 inch tablets recommended
  • Not specifically designed for wired desktops, but can also be used with mouse
  • Microsoft Internet Information Services IIS 7 or above, available with Windows, but must be activated
  • Windows 7 or above or Windows Server 2008 (R2) recommended
  • DentaLab for QuickBooks 1.32 or above
  • Case-Related Images feature requires Image Scanning Supplement
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 or above
  • Wireless Router, for use with local network in lab
  • Broadband Internet Service for remote use

We will be making the transition from the beta-test stage to live production in January.

If you wish to be removed, reply to this email with the subject "unsubscribe".

Customization is available for all products.

Contact us at 1-800-257-4535 or www.mainstreet-systems.com.

"I really love working with QuickBooks. Won't you consider adding lab production to this?

Ed Riccobono
NuLife/Brooklyn
New York, USA


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