Content
When navigating the world of dental business models, you will encounter terminology and acronyms which are new, vague, and confusing. Let’s define and explain common verbiage used in the DSO and dental group practice space. Keep checks to a minimum – use a credit or debit card for office expenses. An in-depth discussion on how to become situationally aware with practice financial data and applying it to business leadership. This is an Australian podcast with author, speaker, and entrepreneur Dr. Jesse Green. When shopping for a dental CPA firm, review their accountant websites carefully and take advantage of free consultation options.
The Bookkeeper is the central hub for nearly all the financial and payroll information in a company. They will be tasked with paying bills, collecting debts, running payroll, and submitting all government forms, sales tax payments, and payroll deductions.
For example, dental practice management and payroll service software are essential tools for many dentists. Problems can also arise when a dental practice owner plans to sell their business at the end of their career. While that’s a long-term financial goal, it creates many accounting challenges regarding practice valuation and dental bookkeeping retirement planning. The profit and loss statement lets the business owner know how profitable his business is. This financial report contains data on all of your company’s expenses, and all of the revenue being generated. A chart of accounts Is the listing of all the accounts that your company will be posting transactions in.
The taxes saved will far outweigh the costs of hiring a bookkeeper for your dental practice. Nowadays, all dental professionals should connect their business bank accounts and credit cards to solutions that can track their transactions and generate financial statements. As we said in the tip above, bookkeeping is not a task that you should reserve for yourself in your busy dental practice..
Some accounting firms will also do payroll – it’s worth it to ask and then evaluate your options. Morgan and Ryan Isaac, CFP discuss year-end considerations for practice owners with regard to practice finances and tax planning. This podcast includes a detailed discussion with Dr. Shawn Terrel on the proprietary monthly reporting prepared by HDA Accounting Group and how that report is prepared. The discussion then pivots to tax planning and best practices to achieve and maintain practice profitability. I am a firm believer that anyone can learn the bookkeeping process; with enough studying and enough practice you’ll be on your way to becoming a bookkeeping, Guru.
Without our dental bookkeeping checklist, I’m not sure how we would function. Often DSOs use the term affiliation when an existing dental practice becomes a part of that dental support organization’s group of clinical locations. Many times the term acquisition is used in place of affiliation. It is important to note that most affiliations are not true acquisitions, at least by the legal definition. Chart of accounts – The chart of accounts is where you’ll be able to see how money is used.
By that I mean, you should be well aware of all the common accounting terms and principles. No matter the field of business you are in, the challenges and competition are at an ever-high. With the changing dynamics of the market, it is important to have a clear strategy for your business management, accounting advisory and bookkeeping schedule. If you do Dental Practices, and are looking for ways to organize your accounting and bookkeeping practices, then you have come to the right place. I recommend two different versions – QuickBooks Basic and QuickBooks Pro. QuickBooks Premier is for advanced users, such as your accountant, and QuickBooks Healthcare Edition is no longer available for retail purchase.
DSO is an acronym which can stand for either dental support organization or dental service organization. Regardless of whether the “S” stands for support or service, the meaning is the same. A DSO is typically a stand-alone, legal entity built specifically to handle the non-clinical functions of the dental offices which it manages. These non-clinical functions include human resources, accounting, legal, marketing, risk management, compliance, recruiting, payroll, IT, purchasing, and several other non-clinical services. The term “corporate dentistry” has been used in the dental industry for several years.
Even if you switch to a fee-for-service model, multiple moving parts in the dental payment process can quickly lead to messy financial records. In addition, they can also spot money being misused, embezzled and is a good way to find wrongly categorized income and expense transactions. Another example would be if your transaction was a purchase from Walgreens for printing paper, Then the payee would be Walgreens and the account you’ll post it in would be office expense.
