Handling Reports

Generating Report Information

SoftDent contains many reports to help you manage your practice, maintain financial information, and identify practice trends.

Report Frequency

Your practice will not need to run every report or might only need to run a particular report from time to time.

The following list gives the suggested frequency for running some key reports:

• Reports set off with a ♦ are those that must be run in order for the software to calculate and maintain up-to-date financial totals.

• Reports You Should Run Every Day:

  • Print Scheduler Report

  • Daily Register Report

  • Daysheet ♦

  • End-of-Day Callback Report

  • Insurance Batch Preview Report

  • Routing Slips

• Reports You Should Run Every Week:

  • Charting Audit

  • Deposit Slip

  • Failed Appointments Report ♦

  • Pending Appt List Report

  • Unsubmitted Claims Report ♦

• Reports You Should Run Every Month:

  • Account Aging Report ♦

  • Accountant's Earnings Report

  • Insurance Check Distribution Report

  • Statements ♦

  • Transactions For A Period Report ♦

Report Accuracy

To generate reports, the software sorts through the information stored in your databases to calculate the numbers on reports. To reduce the time required to run reports, the software stores many of the numbers needed for accounting reports in a single file named RCVTOT.DAT (receivables totals). This file is updated whenever you run a final daysheet.

The following actions affect the accuracy of your reports, particularly the accounting and practice management reports:

• Running the final daysheet:

  Updates the RCVTOT.DAT file. If you forget to run the final daysheet, the receivables amounts and totals will be inaccurate on your reports.

• Deleting patients and/or accounts:

  Changes the information on reports. It is better to mark the account and/or patient as inactive. Most reports can be run to include or exclude patients and accounts that are marked inactive.

• Deleting providers or editing provider names with new provider information:

  Changes the numbers on reports. When a provider leaves the practice, mark the provider as inactive, and add new providers when new employees join the practice.

Dangling Transactions

Transaction information is saved in the TRANS.DAT file. Report accuracy can be affected if this file contains dangling transactions—transactions that are no longer associated with an account or patient. If your receivables totals do not match, or if transactions appear on a report without an associated patient, the TRANS.DAT file might contain dangling transactions.

Reports that use information from the TRANS.DAT file—for example, the Transactions for a Period report, register reports, production reports, and collection reports—could contain dangling transactions.

If you suspect your reports contain dangling transactions, contact Carestream support for assistance in resolving this problem.