July 2023

Education is always a good thing

A vital part of the success of DentaLab for QuickBooks has been the educational part of our program.   This July newsletter will focus on several important educational topics for understanding and using your software for successful case and financial management.  In addition, we want to remind you of some of the other resources readily available to you: 

• Our website www.mainstreetsystems.net includes overviews of products and services, tutorials, a blog with significant timely topics, a knowledge base, a catalog of our monthly newsletters and releases. 
• These monthly newsletters add insights, education and answers to questions received from our users.  
• Our library of white papers includes more in-depth coverage by topic. These can be emailed upon request.  
  
• Personal webinars can include interaction between our staff and yours, a closer look at our training system or your production system. 
• The user guide is available from the Help button in the program and can be searched, viewed, printed, downloaded. 
• Your service agreements provide for continuing guidance and support.
  

A reminder to be sure to leave a voicemail

Our 800 number is 800-257-4535; for Stanley, the company that makes thermoses, the number is 800-251-4535.   On Stanley's website the 1 has a notch at the top that many people mistake for a 7.   This has resulted in many disruptive calls every day to us from those seeking help with their Stanley products.  We have asked Stanley a number of times to correct this but so far they have not.

When a call comes in we typically take a quick look to see if it is one of our customers and/or a dental lab or IT consultant.  If it is not we assume it is a Stanley call and let it go unanswered with an option to leave a voicemail.   We do check voicemails so if you need support and do not get an answer, be sure to identify yourself and your request in a voicemail.

Lots of automatics but you still need to monitor

Although there are ways to set up many automatics in both QuickBooks (QB) and DentaLab for QuickBooks (DQB) for control, convenience and saving time, it is important to monitor the resulting records and reports.  It is good to also know that both programs record the date/time and entry-by for significant entries.  When setting up user logins and passwords, keep in mind that it is best to have these pinpoint a specific user rather than a generic group and to limit access whenever applicable.

In QB, you can customize the queries/reports to show the Last Modified Date and Modified By for transactions.   One of the reports that is worth monitoring in QB is the Voided/Deleted Transactions report to review whether case invoices are being deleted without justification or in error.  Also worth checking are changes to the customer and item records that are essential to your invoicing.

In DQB Standard, significant transactions are recorded in the Events Log.  You can query this log by date range, case number range, specific customer and specific user/login whenever you need to track down or review who made entries and when.  In both DQB Starter and Standard there are a number of entries that are worth reviewing from time to time such as customer alerts, doctor preferences, special pricing, invoice messages, and lab notes that may need additions or changes.  

Definitely worth monitoring are your automatic backups.  Do not assume they have continued to be successful and as scheduled.   If your method includes a log, check this for the components, date/time, size, and status.  If your method simply stores the backups in a folder, you can monitor the components, date/time and size. 

To answer your questions....

Q:  What is the best way to track how a specific invoice was paid? 

A: The easiest way is to go to the Customer Center in QuickBooks, select the customer, then the invoice.  Next right click to display the options and choose the transaction history.   This will display both the invoice and any payments or credits applied to the invoice.   For best results, we recommend that you always record the pertinent information such as whether it was a check, credit card, credit memo or other method and any identifying numbers, codes and dates.

If you want a larger overview of many transactions, it is best to use the QuickBooks reports such as Customer Balance Details or Accountant Transactions, then filter by whatever criteria you wish such as date ranges, transactions types, customers or customer types.

Q:  We want to provide a courtesy case at no charge but let the recipient know the value.  What is the best way to do this? 

A: There are several ways you can do this when creating a QB invoice from a DQB case.  

1) Enter the item with its standard price and line amount showing in the line item.   Then below this add a Discount line item with the matching amount to generate a zero total.  If there are multiple items, add a Subtotal line and then the Discount. This has the added benefit of tracking your discounts in QB.

2) Enter the item with a zero price and line amount.  Append the description field to show the standard price. 

3) Enter the item with a zero price and line amount.  Add a message at the bottom to let the recipient know the reason you are extending the courtesy and its standard value.

Reviewing your business model and workflow

A summer slowdown when many of your customers are vacationing is a good time to review your business model and its corresponding workflow.  This can often lead to worthwhile adjustments.   Typically as an owner or manager you will have developed some thoughts on how the business is doing but for the hard facts and accurate numbers it is best to look to the reports in both QB and DQB.  These are designed to be very flexible and responsive to your specific requests with selection of criteria and contents. 

While in the QB set, you can often add extra fields to the standard reports such as percentages, rankings, comparisons to give you a more accurate picture of your revenue sources, your cash flow patterns, how you are spending, where there may be waste, what is or is not profitable.   In its analysis reports for production and sales, DQB adds extra information such as revenue lost due to remakes and customer profiles for the type of work they send to you, where there may be opportunity for more business. 

Your DQB case records can also provide the basis for evaluating and improving your workflow toward the goals of great customer service and improving your revenues and profits.

• STANDARD PROCEDURES: Reviewing your standard procedures and perhaps adjusting or adding to these gives you the best method for managing and controlling the workflow.  
• MARKING COMPLETIONS: The next component to assure efficient workflow is addressing how you are marking completions.  Within the DQB set the most accurate recording of the date/time, technician, and quality control is the DQBT tablet workflow app.  The most widely used method continues to be the scanning of barcodes to mark completions and quality control.   For work that is outsourced and typically received in batches, the marking by work center and date is the speediest.   The most automatic least effort method is to simply mark case items complete upon invoicing, but the date/time is that of invoicing, not work completion.  
• COMPARISONS:  If providing both digital and analog services, you can compare the performance of cases in each category or product group.  The same is true for other alternatives in services and materials. 
• VIEWPOINTS: From the perspective of customers, dates and other case fields, you can customize your case list to show fields such as times rescheduled, remakes, comparison of dates such as requested vs. shipped.  
  

Understanding compliance vs. compatibility

QuickBooks and DentaLab for QuickBooks work together to provide a strong foundation for compliance. From your calls we have noticed that compliance is sometimes confused with compatibility.   Essentially, when we are talking about compliance this refers to government mandated regulations.  Here is the list for the USA of the laws requiring compliance by dentists and dental labs.  Those in other countries will typically have similar regulations.

• HIPAA for patient privacy
  
• FDA for materials disclosure, imports, good manufacturing practices (GMP) for quality, safety, sanitation 
• OSHA for occupational safety
  
• Corporate reporting and taxes (State and Federal) 
• Payroll reporting and taxes (Local, State, Federal)  
• Sales tax for specific items in specific states 

Providing evidence through good record keeping and documentation is very important when called upon to show you have been in compliance and to avoid having to pay fines.

When we refer to compatibility, this means that your case management software needs to be technically compatible to work with the surrounding software and hardware.  For this, Microsoft and Internet components are added to the list.  From the DQB perspective, this list includes:  

• Internet Browsers/Security Standards
• Intuit QuickBooks
• Microsoft Windows
• Microsoft .Net Framework for app development, device control
  
• SQL Database Management 
  

Part of our job is to be continually alert to changes required for both compliance and compatibility and to adjust DQB, DentalRx and Lab Lookup whenever needed.  These adjustments come to you in the quarterly releases that are included in your service agreements.

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