February 2023

Reminders for February

Our winter special continues:  To help those who have not yet licensed the DQB Images/Digital Files supplement, we are offering a 20% discount from now through February 28 2023.  This reduces the one-time license fee from $500 to $400. 

This supplement provides for: 

• Receiving and storing digital files sent from the dental office via email or the DentalRx web portal  
• Scanning prescriptions, completed work tickets and other case documents 
• Use of a camera to take photos for communication with the dental office or for completed cases  
• Easy access to the digital files and documents in the same variety of ways a case can be located  
• Digital files and documents can be named/identified automatically and included in local and web-based backups
• Cost savings from not having staff do physical filing and retrieval and not having to pay for physical space
  

Electronic facsimiles have come to be accepted by most governments and regulatory authorities so the requirements to store paper copies have dwindled.  It is best to check for your location. 

More than halfway through winter:  We have had crazy ups and downs in the temperatures but no significant snow or ice.  Since our offices are in Pennsylvania, which is in the northeast section of the USA, we plan for the possibility of travel restrictions and power outages in the months of January, February and March.  Two of our alternate locations have standby power generators and we have Verizon digital voice so you can typically continue to reach us by email and/or phone.   Be sure to tell us how to get back in touch with you and the purpose of your call.

To assure accurate billing

There are a number of features in your software to help assure accurate invoices.   Here are some of them:

• Offer the DentalRx web portal so that selection of the procedures/items for the case is performed by the dental office. 
• Select personnel who will pay attention to the details needed for accurate case entry and billing. Encourage them to contact us whenever guidance is needed. 
  
• Set your standards for discounts, remakes, extra fees such as rush, safety and shipping and train your staff on how to handle these.
  
• Require your technicians to mark the work ticket or tablet workflow app with changes and notes.  
• If you negotiate special pricing for a customer, be sure to enter the information in Basic Lists-Price Levels and assign it to the customer so that the pricing is automatically applied when invoicing. 
• When billing multi-stage cases, check on the Invoice History for prior stages to see what has already been billed.
• Make use of the Advance Bill/Estimate option available for each case to enter any known additions or changes.  
• Whenever appropriate, add an alert and indicate that it is to be shown when invoicing.
• Particularly for those who use batch invoicing, make it a standard to enter case edits and/or advance bills prior to invoicing.

Making it your own through personalization and customization

In software systems that serve a wide audience and a variety of business models such as QuickBooks and DentaLab for QuickBooks (DQB), there are a number of ways to personalize and adapt the software for your specific business.   If you have chosen one of the desktop versions of QuickBooks such as Pro, Premier or Enterprise you can edit a variety of preferences and create selection lists for your entries.   If you have chosen one of the QuickBooks online subscriptions designed for remote and mobile use, it is an icon resembling a gear that leads you to the settings. 

In DQB, it is Options, then Settings by category where you can indicate your choices.  Many of these have a default or startup setting for the most popular choice but you can select another.  We recommend that you review these and indicate your choices.  In Options/Custom Fields you can add up to 10 custom fields each for cases, customers and items.  In Options/Invoice Settings you can indicate which case fields you want transferred as custom fields for the QB invoice.  Included throughout the categories are a number of options for automatic actions to save time and assure accuracy.

It is in DQB Basic Lists that you create your personalized selection lists for various fields related to case management.   The basic customer and item information already set up in QuickBooks is synchronized into DQB, where you can add more specific information for your case management.  For a number of these there are sample entries already available when you first install the software to help get you started.  You can choose to use these samples, overwrite them or delete them. The most frequently used are Customer Groups, Lab Notes, Price Levels, Product Groups and Standard Procedures.  

In addition to these personalization features already built into the software, you can also request customizations for your unique needs.  The most frequent requests we receive are for custom case labels, the daily case reports, invoices and work tickets.    It is wise to review from time to time all of the features in both QuickBooks and DQB that provide for personalizing your business.   Because many of the options provide for additional convenience and automatic time-saving actions based on requests by those using the software, it is also a good idea to review the documentation that comes with each new release.   You may find some very worthwhile new features for yourself.

To answer your questions....

Q:  Can we have some case items that are just for the technicians work steps but not for the customer's invoice? 

A: Yes.  Enter all of these items in QuickBooks and then when first synchronized into DQB, go to Basic Lists-Items and for each non-billable item, uncheck the Billable?  to indicate it is not to billed.   The non-billable items will be available for cases, the work tickets and recording technician productivity, but will not be transferred to the case invoice. 

Q:  When there are extra notes on the prescription, where is the best place to record these? 

A: You have a number of choices including custom case fields, the short memo, case notes, and case alerts. Here are some factors to consider:  

• Is the type of information is applicable to most or all of your cases?  If yes, it might be best to create a custom field for it.   
• If you choose a custom field, remember that for cases you are limited to 10 of these with up to 50 characters each. 
• If you choose Short Memo, the maximum number of characters is 20. To search in the Case List, you can choose to match from the beginning or anywhere in the field.
• If the extra information is extensive, it is best to record it in the Case Notes.   This is a memo field that can hold a very large number of characters.   You can also insert text from your standard Lab Notes. 
  
• Keep in mind all the fields already available in the search criteria of the Case List.   These provide for very fast convenient searching. 
• From the Case List action menu, you can customize which columns/fields you want to see. Once a case list is generated, you can click on any column header to sort back and forth. You can also export to Excel.
  
• When appropriate, you can create an alert for the case or the customer.
  
• For complex cases, you might want to enter these notes in a Case Plan and print this to accompany the case and work ticket. 
  

Q:  Can we offer both DentalRx and Lab Lookup to our customers? 

A: Yes. Both DentalRx Direct and DentalRx Custom are designed for use by the prescribing dentist and include the submittal of prescriptions, the transmission of digital files, alerts when digital files have been sent from services such as 3Shape and ITero, submittal of standing instructions and preferences, and other communications with the lab. 

Lab Lookup is designed for use by any authorized staff member in the dental office and is limited to looking up current and history cases and sending messages to the lab.  It has a special feature that provides for group practices to lookup the cases for all of the doctors in the same session.

Q:  We have a group practice that has requested we send them the materials disclosure lists for their cases.  What is the best way to do this? 

A: There are already several possibilities included in DQB for materials disclosure.  

• From the Case List and Case Entry action menus, you can click the Print Materials Disclosure opton. 
• In Options/Invoice Settings, you can set an indicator to have the Materials Disclosure automatically printed upon creation of the invoice.  
• Also from action menus, you can Print Case History to provide a detailed report on the case including Materials Disclosure. 

You can also request customization of your DQB invoice format and if using the Notifications supplement, customize the report to include this.

DQB Remote Access Options and Costs

Remote Tools/Apps

A number of apps are now offered to provide for accessing the computer system where your programs and data are stored.  Some of the most successful and popular are AnyDesk, GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, Teamviewer.  Our favorite for both our own access and to provide support to our customers has been AnyDesk.

Typically these offer both free and very low-cost versions.  You can access your main computer remotely anytime from another computer or a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.  Once downloaded, you will be assigned an authorization code you will use for access.

This is the best choice for those who occasionally want remote access.

VPN Virtual Private Network

Setup a VPN...a virtual private network. With a VPN it will be like your remote computers or devices are actually in the same location as your main computer.  You will be able to use DQB exactly like you would in the lab.  Typical costs are $6 to $10 per month.

This is a very good choice for those who have multiple locations and want a high level of privacy and security.

AWS Amazon Web Services

Using Amazon AWS web services.  Your information and programs will be hosted on the highly secured Amazon servers.  You will still need computers to access these.  The costs will be based on the amount of storage and related services you choose.  Typical range for our customers has been $15 to $50/month.

If you would like to be totally cloud-based, we can setup DQB on an AWS server.

Web-based services you can offer to your customers

These services incur an initial fee to setup with internet security measures, but the ongoing services are included in your DQB service agreements:

• DentalRx Direct – for submittal of prescriptions, digital files, doctor preferences, pickup requests, case lookups, alerts to the lab when digital files are transmitted, and other communications with the lab
• Lab Lookup – to lookup current case status and histories and send messages to the lab

These DQB supplements incur a license fee, which includes the initial installation and setup: 

• DQB Notificatons - to schedule automatic email notifications on cases received and recently shipped with shipment tracking information and marketing messages 
  
• DentalRx Custom - to implement the above DentalRx features as part of your website with customization
  

Intuit also offers options in both the desktop and online versions of QuickBooks for convenient customer access to invoices and payment methods.     

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