May 2011

May Days

One of our main background projects these past two months has been the development and implementation of new tutorials to match the latest version of DQB.   The basic set is now on our website (www.mainstreet-systems) under Products/DentaLab for QuickBooks/Tutorials.   We hope to have some of you review and critique these.  Look for our special offer below.

In honor of the USA's Memorial Day, our offices will be closed on Monday, May 30.  For those in other countries, we will check voicemail and email several times during the day. 

If You Have Been Sitting on the Fence...

If you have been sitting on the fence, wanting to license DQB or one of its supplements or expand to more users, but your budget has been tight, here is an opportunity to receive a 20% discount on any new license.

We have two reviewers already and would like more of you, both experienced and new to the system, to look, listen and critique the new DentaLab for QuickBooks tutorials.   We are offering this special discount to the next 8 volunteers.  The  running time for the eleven sections is less than an hour.   You will need to listen to all sections and give us a written critique by May 31, 2011, to let us know if there are any points that are not clear, any to be corrected or added and how helpful these were.  Call or email within the next few days if you would like to do this.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q:  How can I find all the recent cases that include a specific item?

A:  In QuickBooks, go to the Report Center, then to Sales (for Customer, Item or Rep) and then Detail. Next choose to Modify the report and in the Filter tab, choose Date and select your date range, then choose Item and go to the selection box to the left and select the specific item.   In the frame to the left, you can also choose which fields you want to show in the report by checking each one.   Critical fields to include are Num and Date for the invoice number, which includes the case number, and invoice date.   Other fields that can help assure correct matches to cases are Customer and Patient. 

Note that only billable items are included in these QuickBooks sales reports.  If you would be interested in having a report in DQB that would also cover non-billable items used in cases, please let us know.  

Q:  I would like to find out how many times a certain item appeared on work tickets this past year.  Do any of the DQB reports do this?

A:  Yes, this would be in the DQB production analysis reports.   You would need to choose a product group that included the item.   Then for the Product Group Analysis report, select the product group and date range you wish to review.   This report provides both units and dollars, standard and remake, by item and is based on schedule dates.  

Note that it would be a good idea to run such a report to determine how active an item has been if you are contemplating making it inactive in QuickBooks.  

Q:  In South Africa, we now have a new Consumer Act that requires that we always have readily available records on each case.   Can your software provide this and is it compatible with the QuickBooks version for South Africa?

A:  Yes.  To meet with compliance requirements, DentaLab for QuickBooks provides many ways to find case records so that you can view and print detailed case histories.   In addition, it provides for standard procedures, materials disclosure, quality control tracking and reporting, queries to aid in manufacturing recalls, and customer activity logs.   There are now eight international QuickBooks versions available and compatible with DentaLab for QuickBooks:   Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States of America.   

Two Steps to Get the Job Done

Here and there, we receive calls from customers telling us they think certain features of the system are not working.  For these, we typically find that the first step was completed, but not the second.  Some examples are these:

- Price Levels are setup and are correct.  But the user forgot to assign these to the appropriate customer(s).

- Jobs are setup under customers in QuickBooks to handle doctors within a group practice.  But the second step under Options/Synchronization to check jobs to be synchronized along with customers was not.

- In Options/Case Settings, the user checkmarked which case fields are to be transferred to the QuickBooks invoice, but did not change the QuickBooks invoice template to show or print these fields. 

- The lab determines that a certain item or material will no longer be offered and marks it as inactive in QuickBooks, but does not remove it or replace it in their standard procedures.

- An error message is received for which support is needed, but the user does not click the button to send the message to Mainstreet.

- Most of our users learn quickly the importance of backing up, but many fail to check from time to time that their backups are working correctly and even more do not know how to restore, should this become necessary.

Downloading, emailing, googling, scanning, synchronizing....

These are some of the things many of us do now that were not at all part of our lives ten years ago.   There are even more that can be added to this list as technology rapidly advances:  friending on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, messaging, texting, posting, remoting, sharing, skyping, web conferencing.  

Some of these actions have been very much a part of your DentaLab software for several years now.   We have found that many of you would prefer to have a webinar rather than traveling to learn, would rather download directly from the internet  than have media or literature sent via the mail.  Some of these serve to greatly reduce costs such as skyping and web conferencing.   Some save both time and money such as emailing and scanning.  Some not only save time and money but also assure greater accuracy such as synchronizing.  Some provide ease and convenience such as remoting and sharing.  

At this time, we have found that some of the advances in technology are not highly applicable to dental labs or are not widely adopted such as the use of mobile devices or the transmission of dental prescriptions to the lab.   Many labs do not have much spare time for Facebook or Twitter interactions or for creating newsletters for their customers and prospects. 

If you find some new possibilities or simply want to explore and learn more about new technologies and how they might be beneficial to your business, please give us a call.   Looking back, we know that many of your suggestions and ideas have helped to bring the DentaLab set of software to its current level of success and usefulness to so many labs.  

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