One of the biggest and most important of those responsibilities is bookkeeping. You should review your dental practice’s finances regularly, preferably on a monthly basis. This allows you to monitor your progress, identify trends, and dental bookkeeping make informed decisions based on your financial performance. A bookkeeper or accountant has the knowledge they need to balance your books. They can also handle any unpaid bills, overdraft transactions, and uncollected receivables.
However, efficient financial management is vital to the success of your dental practice. In this blog, we’ll explore the role of accounting and bookkeeping in dental practice management and provide some best practices and tips to help you streamline your finances and boost your bottom line. Expenses are another important aspect of bookkeeping for dental practices. This includes tracking the costs of running the business, such as dental supplies, rent, salaries, and utilities.
New York School for Medical & Dental Assistants
Cash flow, the money coming in and going out, is another important component of accounting for your dental practice. Managing cash flow properly is essential to the successful operation of your dental practice accounting process. Being knowledgeable about https://www.bookstime.com/articles/professional-bookkeeping-service your cash flow can give you peace of mind, even if you are struggling with this aspect of your practice. Problems with cash flow management can arise because it can be difficult to manage the timing of what is coming in versus what is flowing out.
It means dedicating enough time to learning what matters and putting the right people in place to keep you informed on the various business functions as you move toward your goals. If you really despise it, we suggest you bring in someone else to focus on and manage those tasks. No matter what, someone should be dedicated to accounting and have a solid understanding of it, so you can get high level reports and stay informed. Your business has a better chance of success when you know how your practice is functioning and can make strategic decisions.
TAX PLANNING AND PREPARATION
Patient information, written or electronic, must be kept secure from loss, theft, or unauthorized access, use or disclosure. Confidential information should be kept out of plain view, and stored in a secure environment. Care should be taken not to talk about patients in public places, even if you are not using the patient’s name. Trust us, they want to do what they can to get your cash flow in a healthy place. Long story short, you can obtain a ton of information from your P&L statement. For example, information from your P&L statement can be used in comparison with your goals.
- For this reason, we recommend recording your deposits weekly and reconciling them on a weekly basis.
- Typically, in a dental practice the cost refers to the cost of services sold, not truly cost of goods sold.
- That’s because litigation is one of the most significant risks in the healthcare industry, and you can’t afford to leave yourself exposed.
- It automates routine financial tasks, such as invoicing, payroll, and expense tracking, to save time and reduce errors.
It happens a lot, but the only way to catch these mistakes is to reconcile payroll to the payroll reports for each pay period. To do this, you’ll just make sure the gross pay and employer payroll tax totals on the Profit & Loss matches the payroll reports. Comment below if you’d like another blog post explaining this process in more detail. We download and organize all month-end bookkeeping related documents for our dental practices into Dropbox folders for each client. We chose Dropbox because it’s HIPAA safe and easy for clients and their CPA’s to access so you will see me referring to Dropbox. It allows you to keep track of financial information, make informed decisions based on financial reports, and protect yourself against fraudulent financial activity, including tax delinquencies.
Did you go to dental school to become a bookkeeper or tax accountant?
Designed for small businesses, QuickBooks displays the practice’s tasks in a visual “icon” format. No accounting knowledge is needed – no need to understand debits and credits! The QuickBooks Navigator breaks accounting activities into “click-on” pictures with arrows to show logical processes.
Closing your books correctly can ensure that your financial records are accurate and reliable, which is essential for making informed financial decisions. Dental Accounting includes payroll services for organizations overwhelmed with tax filing, reporting, and payroll processing. They provide outsourced payroll solutions that fit the dental practice’s needs. The most common payroll processing services in dental accounting include the 1099s preparations, personalized payroll reports, direct deposits, unemployment claims, and W-2s and W-3s preparation. As we said in the tip above, bookkeeping is not a task that you should reserve for yourself in your busy dental practice..