November 2020

November is a month for reminders and saying thanks

First the reminders....

Please mark on your calendars that we will be closed for the USA Thanksgiving holiday November 26-27 (Thursday-Friday).

Remember to begin updating your 2021 holidays and non-workdays in DQB so that you will be ready to schedule cases into the new year.

If you are planning to update in any way for the start of the new year, it is best to begin in November and not wait until the end-of-year and holiday period. 

Call or email if you would like further guidance on keeping your system up to date and running smoothly.   If you would like an annual review please contact us this month.  Typically we cover topics such as compatibility with other technology, the best ways to provide remote access, automatic secured backups, case workflows, digital files, web portals for enhancing communication between the dental office and your lab...and whatever else you would like.                    

We will be hoping that the hurricane season will be over and the snow and ice season not begun, but should extreme weather conditions cause us to not open the office, we will be using Verizon's Digital Voice to receive Mainstreet telephone calls on our smart phones. We also have a standby generator at one of our offices so should there be a power outage, we will be able to receive emails. Be sure to always identify yourself, leave adequate contact information and the purpose of your call or email.

And very importantly, sending a hearty thank you....

We send many thanks to all of you who have participated in the DentaLab user group through your service agreement, your submission of good ideas and suggestions, your giving excellent referrals to other dental labs and the many other ways you help to keep this program dynamic and strong.     Here's wishing you a fine relaxing long Thanksgiving weekend!

What's on tap for  December

The Christmas and New Year holidays this year very nicely give us two long weekends to celebrate.   We will be closed December 24-25 (Thursday-Friday) and again December 31 and January 1 (Thursday-Friday).  

We ask that you schedule much earlier in November or December any changes you are planning for 2021 that would need our support.

Some end of year specials for you....

For those who have been using DQB Starter but would like to capture and store digital documents and files for their cases and customers, we are offering an upgrade to DQB Standard with the Images supplement at a 20% discount.  Typically the fee would be $600, but the discount brings this down to $480.  

For those who would like to include a custom DentalRx web portal for their customers in their current website, we are offering DentalRx Custom at a 20% discount.  This brings the fee down from $1600 to $1380 and includes up to 4 hours for customization and coordination with your current website developer.

For those who do not have a website or want to replace their old website and include the DentalRx web portal, we are offering development of a modern website with four basic pages and DentalRx at a 20% discount.  This brings the fee down from $1600 to $1380.  Additional pages and features will be available at our standard billing rates. 

The Advanced Backup Protocol has proven to be very useful to many labs.  It is particularly good to have if:

• you tend to forget backing up and would like it to be automatic
  
• you want a high level of encryption and other security measures
• you have a large volume of data and image scans
• you like having multiple locations to store your backups for extra security and peace of mind.
  

The ongoing service for this is included in your service agreements, but there is an initial setup fee to cover the technical and security aspects involved.  We are offering a 20% discount on the $200 initial setup fee, bringing this down to $160. 

These offers will remain in effect until Friday, December 11, 2020.

To answer your questions...

Q: A small lab will be merging into our lab and we need to keep track of which accounts he is bringing in.  How is it best to do this?

A: In QuickBooks, there are two fields that can be used to classify customers.   One is Customer Type and the other is Rep.  For either of these you can add an entry to identify the merging accounts in your own selection list.   Both are synchronized into DQB and shown at the top of the customer screen.

In DQB, you can also set up a Customer Group with his customers to use when generating production and sales reports.   If you wish, you can also setup alerts for these customers, specifying where they are to be shown and if appropriate, an expiration date. 

Q: We encounter "out of memory" messages from time to time.  Can you tell us why these occur?

A: There are a number of reasons you may run out of memory to perform work on your computer.   With your authorization, our tech support team can remote in to your computer when these occur and work with you to investigate what is happening. 

It is a good idea not to brush by and ignore error messages that repeatedly occur.  Sometimes they may indicate developing hardware problems, sometimes operational or compatibility issues, sometimes just a need to update your software.    

When a little coaching is all that it takes....

When we design software we are always aiming to make it simple and straight-forward as well as capable in providing accurate up-to-date information.   We are sometimes surprised when in our support calls we learn that someone is using the software very differently than intended.  Here are some examples for you:  

• A lab that had six price lists set up six records for each item in QuickBooks rather than having one item in QuickBooks with six Price Levels in DQB that included assignments to customers to be applied when creating their invoices. 
• Rather than tracking lost income due to remake discounts, the lab set up remake versions for many of their items in QuickBooks and tracked how much income was coming in for these, rather than analyzing how much they gave up.  
• Because their prior system only provided for recording case due dates without consideration for existing and planned workloads, they continued to record only the critical dates without implementing automatic scheduling even as their work and demands on their time increased.  
  

Although most of the DQB and DentalRx features are easy and intuitive, there are several areas of the system where a little extra coaching can be very helpful.  From our experience, here are some of them:  

• Setting up standard procedures and adjusting when needed    
• Establishing the factors involved in automatic scheduling
• Tracking multi-stage cases and their billing  
• Handling group practices  
• Discounting and remakes  
• User roles and security measures to limit access  
• Handling special requests from customers
• Keeping track of promises, actions needed, communications
  

Having a service agreement in place to cover ongoing guidance and coaching can make a big difference in how well your lab runs.   The ideas and suggestions from a number of labs also add convenience and efficiency.   The user group program includes personal guidance as well as white papers and webinars on topics of your choice.

How DQB and DentalRx responded to this unusual year

Looking back over the changes that were made this past year in response to your requests, we have taken note that many of them involved revised work schedules for the dental offices as well as the labs.  Here is a summary:

• Rather than having the schedule daily limit for each work center applied to all workdays, you can schedule limits by day of the week. 
• The customer information windows for case entry and scheduling pickups were expanded to include the customer custom fields.  This provided a quick way to record the revised schedules for each dental office and have this available when scheduling cases and their pickup/deliveries. 
• You can also indicate that pickups are to be made every work day. 
• For customer alerts, you can specify where these are to be shown such as case entry, invoicing, advance bills, scheduling pickups. 
• For DentalRx, you can also include your schedule so the dental offices could see this when submitting prescriptions and other communications. 
• For labs registered with digital dental providers such as 3Shape and Itero,  DentalRx provides for alerting the lab that digital files had been sent along with their identifying information.

We were happy our programmers could provide these changes quickly for you so that you could adapt to the limitations that developed because of the pandemic with its increased safety measures and continue to provide worthwhile information and service to your customers.

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