22 Mar 4 common mistakes dental offices make with their bookkeeping

When the patients start pouring in, that’s a good thing right? Well, yes. Busy dental practices are always the end goal. The problem with busy is that mistakes can happen. When I was younger, a line I heard my Grandma say and I remember to this day is that, “Haste makes waste.” I didn’t understand it at the time, but it makes more sense as an adult. The busier you are, the more mistakes happen. It’s just a fact.

Bookkeeping is sometimes tedious. It’s one of those things where if one number is off the whole account is thrown off. You don’t want to rush your bookkeeping, just like you don’t want to rush through your patient visits. Can you imagine if you didn’t spot a cavity?

Here are some common mistakes dental offices make with their bookkeeping.

1) Putting expenses in the wrong place

When you place the wrong expense in the wrong category, it can mess your bookkeeping up quick. If you or someone you have hired to do your bookkeeping doesn’t know what they are doing it is a recipe for disaster and can make it a tremendous job to fix. Make sure you are aware of the proper place to expense each item and if you are not, we are always happy to sit down with you to make sure you are doing this right.

2) Not sitting down quarterly to reconcile and update your books

This isn’t a mistake, per se, but if you wait till the end of the year to do ALL your bookkeeping, it’s a huge time suck. Plus, what if you have been recording things incorrectly the entire year! Yikes. No one wants to deal with that mess. Taking a look every few months also shows you where you are making money and where you are losing it. Every successful business needs this knowledge in their back pocket to continue to be successful.

3) Neglecting to back up your systems

Bookkeeping is not done the old-fashioned way anymore. Bookkeeping software has changed drastically from what it once was. You need to make sure that if you are using Quick Books desktop or any other bookkeeping software that is not cloud-based that you are using the most current version. Rules change from year to year, and also new updates often make things faster and easier. You want to be using the latest version for all your bookkeeping. We just happen to have this post that talks all about it.

4) Wasting time

Think about all the time you spend doing bookkeeping for your dental practice. Don’t you want to spend that time doing other things, like seeing new patients that bring you more money? It’s the same with any business, but I never cease to need to repeat this. Hire out what you are not the expert at and do what you do best. You wouldn’t try to fix your car if you weren’t a mechanic so why would you decide to do your bookkeeping. Pro-active bookkeeping is what we do. We stop problems before they start and save you the most precious of all resources, TIME.