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September 2014

DentaLab NewsSeptember 2014
from Mainstreet Systems & Software

FAQ  DentaLab News

 

Lots of autumn activity!

It seems everyone is still watching their budget closely, but we have been pleased to see lots of activity this past month as labs work to improve their production and increase their business.   We too have quite a few projects underway.   Here are some of these:

  1. A new addition to the Image Scanning supplement will include images captured by camera in the lab in addition to those scanned and those sent from the dental offices.  For direct-to-your-computer storage and indexing to the case, we have been working with the IPEVO Point 2 View USB camera.   This camera is compact, lightweight and inexpensive (currently less than $70  USD on Amazon where you can review the full specifications).  It can be placed on a stand or hand-held, with resolution up to 1600 x 1200 and digital zoom up to 6x.  We have found that many labs have become interested in taking photos of their work to store with the case, sometimes for use in communicating with the dental offices, sometimes for history/archival purposes.
  2. Moving to the next stage for the User Roles feature, which has proven to be very popular, we have been working on having limited menus to match the roles available for the logged-in user. 
  3. To respond to your requests, we have already completed a new feature to provide analysis of the contents of the custom fields you have for cases, customers and items. This will be available in the Reports menu.
  4. We also hope to complete in time for the October release a new feature to provide for deactivating work centers no longer needed.  These will remain available for history records, but will no longer be available for selection when setting up standard procedures, items and schedules.

Don't get too far behind

We find that some labs are quite content letting their information systems roll along, not wanting to disturb their nice status-quo.  The reality, however, is that that the technology and compliance requirements surrounding these systems are constantly changing both for the lab and for computer hardware and software.   If you neglect your system for too long, catching up may become much more difficult and expensive than if you maintained it in small steady steps.  

In DQB, you can go to the About option to check your current version.  For both the standard and starter versions, the current DQB release is 1.39.   If your version is more than one or two versions behind this, be sure to call for the download codes if you are covered by a service agreement.

For those not covered by a service agreement, we are offering a very limited open period from November 3 through 14, 2014.  This will involve an update fee that will depend on your level of licensing and how many releases you have missed.

Early Autumn Specials

For our early autumn specials, we are offering a 20% discount on the two supplements that can be used by the dental offices to check on the status of their cases sent to your lab.   These are Notifications (standard fee of $400 reduces to $320) and DentalRx (standard fee of $1600 reduces to $1280).  These specials will remain in effect until October 24, 2014.

 

  Easy, versatile software for the modern dental laboratory.

To answer your questions...

Q:  One of our doctors has asked us how many of their cases were for a particular item.  Which report would be best for this?

AIn both standard and starter versions, this could easily be handled by the Sales Analysis by Customer Group report, which gives statistics item by item. You can either glean this from the default customer group, which includes all customers, or by having a customer group dedicated to the requesting customer.  If you have the standard version, the report for just one customer is available in the Customer Center Report for Sales Analysis by Item. This report includes both counts and dollars invoiced, along with remake and adjustment statistics for whatever date period you specify.

Q:  Can we have our logo added to our email notifications reports?

AIf you have a good graphic of your logo, it can be added to your notifications report.  Other candidates for placement of a logo are the invoices printed in DQB, your case materials disclosure reports, and the larger shipping labels.   Typically, we ask to see the graphic and have you tell us where you would like to have it placed so that we can review these and let you know what is workable.

Q:  We want to add a small guide for several of our items for the dental offices.  What is the best way to do this?

AThe documents that typically are sent to the dental offices are the invoice and the case materials disclosure report.   If the guide is applicable all the time, it would be best to append it to the item's description in QuickBooks.  If it is applicable only part of the time, it might be better to create a lab note and append it to the item description for the specific cases where it applies.  The item description is included in both of these documents.


   With the same look and feel of QuickBooks.

Let your customers know you've chosen the best

When trying to win new business, many labs focus on the quality, timeliness and pricing involved in fulfilling the dental prescriptions.   Those who have chosen the top-notch combination of QuickBooks and DentaLab for QuickBooks have many other benefits to offer to their customers.

  • Keeping written records of discussions, meetings, and other activities with the dental office can help to assure promises are kept, preferences are noted, special situations are handled properly, memories are accurate along with many other actions that result in excellent customer service.
  • Whenever warranted, alerts at the customer or case level entered into the computer records will be shown at the appropriate times when attention to these is needed.
  • For a variety of reasons, if your customer needs detailed case and/or invoice histories, they can be accessed in seconds for viewing, printing and/or emailing.
  • Being able to store, use and quickly access electronic images and files for better coordination.   With the DQB image supplement, these are become part of the record for each case and can be retrieved in seconds by the same variety of criteria as the case.
  • Should there be a manufacturer recall or safety alert for materials used in cases, the computer records can be searched to find the very specific cases involved for notification to the doctor and patient.
  • You can offer them a choice of several ways to check on the status of their cases such as regular email notifications on cases received and shipped,  DentalRx for direct computer-to-computer submission and lookup, the tried-and-true method of calling and having a friendly person quickly answer their questions.  You may find that offering all three satisfies the preferences of everyone.
  • The time you save by having the computer do the work of searching, filtering, sorting and reporting information can be directed to many activities beneficial to both of you such as gaining new knowledge, providing education, coordination. 

By using these and other wise practices, you will be using technology in the best way possible, to deliver not only superb cases but also superb customer service at affordable prices.

Not so obvious

We find in our support calls that sometimes lab personnel have not tuned into some of the very worthwhile features of QuickBooks and DentaLab for QuickBooks.   Here are some of these:

Drilldowns:  In QuickBooks, if you want to know the details behind one of the figures you find in its summary reports, you can double-click on it to see these details.  Along the same line, in the DQB Home Page of the standard version, you can double-click on any of the graphs to see the details that were used to create the graph. In the DQB master schedules, you can click on any of the date boxes to view/edit the case details corresponding to the schedule date.

Mandatory Case Entries:   If you want to require entry of certain fields during Case Entry such as the patient name, in Options/Settings/Case Settings you can check which of these fields must be entered for case entry to proceed. 

Case Fields to Bypass:   If  there are certain fields in Case Entry that you do not use at all, perhaps the pan code or the patient age/sex, in Options/Settings/Case Settings, you can check which of these fields you do not want to have available for entry.  

Use of Colors:   There are several places in the system for which you can go to Options/Case Settings to pick the colors you want to designate certain field values.  Some of these include:

 - the ship date on work tickets

 - case status such as prebooked, on-hold, out-for-tryin in the case list

 - the patient name by ship method on the work tickets

 - the graph colors by category on the home page dashboard

Report Criteria:   In both QuickBooks and DentaLab for QuickBooks, you can limit the information you want to see.  In QB, these are in the Modify and Filter tabs as well as the Period, Date Range and Sort selections.  In DQB, these are in the various criteria at the top of each screen for each report category.  In addition, for most reports you can elect whether to generate a summary or detailed report. 

Report Formats:   In QB,  you can create a PDF version of most forms and reports.  In DQB in addition to the standard Print button, you can use the Save button to store the report in a large variety of industry-standard formats such as PDF, Excel, CSV.  

We are guessing that if you take the time to explore through some of these features, you will be thinking wow, I wish I had tried this sooner!


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Customization is available for all products.

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

"I could kick myself for not doing this sooner...this system is awesome!"

Dale Dramstadd
Doctors Dental Lab
Minnesota, USA


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