January 2023

A few reminders for this month...

Since our offices are in Pennsylvania, which is in the northeast section of the USA, we may experience significant snow and ice as well as travel restrictions or power outages in the months of January, February and March.  Two of our alternate locations have standby power generators and we have Verizon digital voice so you can typically continue to reach us by email and/or phone.   Be sure to tell us how to get back in touch with you and the purpose of your call.

For DQB and DentalRx: 

• Take a few minutes to send us any updates you have on your system for your support records here on hardware, Internet, Windows, QuickBooks, your personnel and contact information.  
• It is wise to do an annual review on the above plus other surrounding components such as your backup system, remote access, plans to implement new features.
  
• If you plan to make changes for any of these and would like to have our guidance and technical support, call or email in advance to schedule a dedicated date and time.
• Should you encounter an error that you cannot handle on your own, click the Send to Mainstreet button to send the technical details to our weblog, and then send an email or call to let us know you need support. 
  

Our winter special

To help those who have not yet licensed the DQB Images/Digital Files supplement, we are offering a 20% discount from now through February 28 2023.  This reduces the one-time license fee from $500 to $400. 

This supplement provides for: 

• Receiving and storing digital files sent from the dental office via email or the DentalRx web portal  
• Scanning prescriptions, completed work tickets and other case documents 
• Use of a camera to take photos for communication with the dental office or for completed cases  
• Easy access to the digital files and documents in the same variety of ways a case can be located  
• Digital files and documents can easily be named and included in local and web-based backups
• Cost savings from not having staff do physical filing and retrieval and not having to pay for physical space
  

Electronic facsimiles have come to be accepted by most governments and regulatory authorities so the requirements to store paper copies have dwindled.  It is best to check for your location. 

Can case workflow be standardized?

With the advances in technology for digital dentistry, mobile devices, remote access and software, there has been renewed focus on the workflow involved in dental lab cases. As longtime software developers for this industry, we have had the question of standardization posed to us by a number of labs and in turn have given this much thought.  

Our response is this:   No, our software should not be designed for just one standard of case workflow. Instead it should take into account the successful methods and business models that have been developed by our users.  Some choose to remain small, some to be specialized, some to become completely digital, some to outsource part or all of the work, some to remain local while others expand to national and international customers.   Along the way, many have implemented very effective ways to produce their cases with efficiency and accuracy as well as great customer service.   

When designing our software, these are the basics we follow:

• While the case workflow does not need to follow just one protocol, the goals to give the doctors specifically what they want when they want it should be paramount. 
• Dental lab software should be a resource that can provide the tools and the information needed to achieve these goals with efficiency and accuracy.

Some of the most significant features within DQB you can use to achieve outstanding case workflow are:

• Standard Procedures:   These provide an ideal schedule for all the steps in various types of cases, with the capability of overriding for special circumstances.
• Master Schedule:  You can set up daily limits, have variable schedules, mark completions with overviews by work centers and dates. 
• Marking Completions:   DQB provides a number of ways such as barcode scanning, tablet touch technology, batches by work center, to mark completions including technicians, timings, quality control.
• DentalRx Web Portal:   Single entry of the prescription at the dental office that can include digital files, alerts from digital dental services on transmissions, preferences, special requests and communications.
• Case and Customer Alerts:  Messages can be shown at the appropriate times to let all of those involved know of requests, specifications and other alerts.
  
• Case Lists and Reports:  These provide for specifying a variety of criteria and dates to track and monitor case progress and history.
• Automatic Actions:  Whenever appropriate, in Options/Settings you can specify automatic actions to be performed for selections, transactions, information, etc. to assure accuracy and efficiency.
• Lab Lookup:  You can provide a web portal for the dental office to look up both the current and history status of their cases.

To answer your questions....

Q:  Is there a way we can see the patient name for each open invoice when posting a payment in QuickBooks? 

A: When you create a QB invoice from a case in DQB, the patient name is recorded in the memo field.  You can also use the feature in DQB Invoice Settings to transfer the patient name from the case to a custom QB field for the invoice.  When you select a customer in QB in preparation for posting the payment, there is a button Open Balances you can click to generate a report of the open invoices.   This report will show the patient name for each invoice in the Memo field.   In addition, when in the screen to enter the payment, you can double click on any row in the grid of open invoices to see the full invoice including the patient name. 

Q: Can the case fields we selected to show on the QB invoice also be shown on the customer's QB statement?

A: The source fields for these are not the same.  Here is how this all works.  In QuickBooks, you can use custom fields to transfer case information to the QB invoice.   In DQB, it is in Options/Invoice Settings that you indicate which case fields you wish to transfer to the QB custom fields on invoices.  Be sure to read the on-screen guide for the Intuit rules to create these custom fields.   You will have a choice of patient, shade, teeth #, pan, enter date, request date/time, short memo.   Note that the QB versions differ in the maximum number of custom fields.  For example:  QB Pro maximum is 7, QB Online Essential maximum is 3. 

If using QB to print your case invoices, you would typically design the layout of the invoice template to show the custom fields you have chosen above the invoice line items.  If using DQB to print your case invoices, the custom fields you have chosen are by default shown above the invoice line items.  You can request customization of your DQB invoice and, if you wish, have multiple designs and assign these to your customers.

For the standard QB statement, it is the invoice memo field that is included for each transaction.  By default, DQB transfers the patient name to the memo field for this.  In DQB Options/Invoice Settings, there are 4 indicators you can set for the QB invoice memo to also include the case pan, the tooth numbers, and/or the short memo.  

Q:  In the Case List, I sometimes can find a case by its case number but not by the other criteria. Am I doing something wrong? 

A: In our support calls, we have found the most common reasons this happens are: 

1. Criteria from the prior search have not been cleared. To clear, click the Reset button on the right.   
2. The next most common reason is that one of the date criteria on the left does not match the corresponding date for the case.   You can try clicking off both date criteria.  You can also in Options/Case Settings/Dates, set the default date range to more months.  The initial setting is 2 months, but this can be changed.
   

How outsource features differ from in-house

In our support calls we often encounter a need for clarification on the features for outsourced cases.  These features were introduced in recent years based on a number of requests we received from the dental labs.  Some were basing their production entirely on outsourcing, others on just a portion of the work.   Essentially the differences are these:  

• The option for New Outsourced Case simplifies and speeds up the entry process.  There are less fields to enter and all items are scheduled to be completed on the same return date from the outsource point.  
• The standard for outsource work tickets has been to print in landscape mode with the left half having more details for in-house reference and the right half with less information to go to the outsource point.   The outsource tickets are often customized.
  
• When entering a new outsource case, you choose whether to generate a standard or an outsource work ticket for the case just entered.
  
• When using Case Entry or the Case List, from the action menu you can choose to show and/or print the outsource work ticket. 
  

To set up for outsourcing:

• In Basic Lists-Work Centers, you can set up each outsource point as a work center, indicate that is an outsource center and enter the standard number of work days to return the completed case. 
• In Basic Lists-Outsource Item List, you can set up a list and then select the items for it if you wish to limit the number of items eligible for outsourcing. 
  
• In Options/Case Settings/Work Tickets, you can indicate if you want to include the completed items on the tickets.  The default is to include only those items not marked as completed. 
  

For cases that have both in-house and outsourced steps:  

• If you begin with the option New Outsource Case, the case will be available from Case List for further steps, scheduling or editing.
  
• If you mark the items completed upon return from the outsource point, they will not be included in any subsequent work tickets.
  
• For cases that begin in-house, you can mark the items completed, then add the outsource items and from the action menu, show/print the outsource work ticket.  
  

Also worth noting: 

Those who do not wish to enter and schedule detailed steps/items for their cases, can use the simplified New Outsourced Case option whether or not the work will be done in-house or outsourced.

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