There are many standard reports available in Open Dental that provide the data your practice needs to track and measure. We often hear, “How do I close out a month/year in Open Dental?” The short answer is that you don’t need to “close out” any period in Open Dental. In fact, reports can be run anytime! In this post, we’ll review the typical end-of-day and end-of-month reports that you may want to run.
End of Day Reports
Incomplete Procedures Notes Report
Ensure all necessary notes are completed (and signed) at the end of the day using this report, which shows all completed procedures with incomplete Procedure Notes or Procedure Group Notes, and can optionally include procedures with no notes or unsigned notes.
Patient Portion Uncollected Report
This report shows whether you collected patient portions, and is a quick way to see if payments were allocated properly. Easily right-click a row to go to open the selected patient’s account. If the patient’s account balance doesn’t match the amount uncollected, you may need to Allocate Unearned Income or complete an Income Transfer to allocate the payment. If the patient has a balance, it’s possible payment was not collected at the time of service.
Payments Report
Shows all Patient Payments and Claim Payments for a specific date or date range – this should match up to your deposits. If checks are missing, check the Unfinalized Insurance Payments Reports to ensure all claim payments are finalized. Unfinalized payments will not appear on this report.
Unfinalized Insurance Payments Report
Shows insurance payments that have been entered, but not yet finalized. Easily right-click a row to open the selected patient’s account or claim to finalize payment or, if all unfinalized payments are part of the same bulk check, click Create Check to quickly finalize all the payments on the list.
End of Month Reports
See this handy reference: Tracking Revenue: Reports for Every Stage of the Cycle
Procedures Not Billed to Insurance Report
Shows procedures that have been completed, but no claim has been created. Either mark the procedure as ‘do not bill ins’ or create the claim so you can get paid! Quickly create claims by selecting procedures from the list and clicking the New Claims button, then send claims from Manage Module > Send Claims. Alternatively, right-click on a row to go to the selected patient’s account and mark procedures as Do Not Bill or create claims individually.
Claims Not Sent Report
Shows claims that have been created but not sent. Typically, these are secondary or tertiary claims. You shouldn’t see primary insurance claims older than today. Claims in the WaitQ status are waiting to be sent. Go to Manage Module > Send Claims to send these claims. Right-click on a row to quickly open the selected patient’s account in order to view or edit the claim.
Outstanding Claims Report
Shows claims that have been sent but no payment received. The report also shows preauthorizations that have not been received (the Type column shows Preauth). Double-click a row to quickly open the claim or preauthorization in order to receive, re-send, or edit. Right-click to open the selected patient’s account.
TECH TIP:
This report makes follow-up a breeze by allowing you to assign follow-up for claims and preauthorizations to specific users, assign custom tracking statuses, filter by carrier, and see carrier and subscriber info all from one window.
TECH TIP:
If you have claims that have received partial payment but you’re still expecting payment on a few procedures on the claim, select those procedures, and click Split Claim to split those off onto their own. That way, you retain the visibility of unpaid procedures but your balance on the Outstanding Claims report will be more accurate.
Procedures Overpaid Report
This report shows procedures that have total payment exceeding the adjusted procedure fee or if adjustments/write-offs exceed the procedure fee. If total payments, write-offs, and adjustments exceed the procedure fee, procedures will be listed on the report.
Aging of A/R
Keep track of patient account balances with this report. Managing your receivables is an ongoing challenge. If you’re considering a Collections Agency to help you, take a look at our post: 5 Questions You Should Ask Your Collections Agency
Insurance Aging Report
The Insurance Aging Report is a lot like the Aging of A/R report, but it allows you to see an aged breakdown of your outstanding insurance estimates.
The report can also be run to only include patients with outstanding claims, which allows you to filter by carrier and/or group. When running the report for patients with outstanding claims, the report will include carrier information and split outstanding estimates by insurance plan and patient/guarantor. This version of the report will only include information on outstanding insurance balances and does not include information on outstanding patient balances.
Production & Income Report
Easily run Production and Income Reports for various date and data ranges (i.e., provider, clinic) using More Options.
Learn more in our post: Tracking Practice Profitability with the Production and Income Report.
Other Reports to Run
Procedures Report
Run this report to see procedures performed in a date range. To see a list of each individual procedure performed in a date range, run using the ‘Individual’ report type.
To see how many times each procedure code was performed in a timeframe, set the date range and choose the report type ‘Grouped By Procedure Code’ (to limit the report to only return certain procedure codes, enter a code or partial code in the ‘Only for procedure codes similar to:’ box).
Procedures Codes – Fee Schedules Report
Want to print a fee schedule? Use the Procedure Codes – Fee Schedules Report. Select the fee schedule (and Clinic and Provider, if you’re using different fees at these levels), sort by code or categories, then click OK.
While you don’t have to “close out” a period in Open Dental, you may want to use Global Lock Dates to prevent the backdating of data, so reports don’t change. Learn more on our Global Lock Dates manual page.
Not finding what you’re looking for? Try our Query Examples page!
The Open Dental Query Team has written thousands of custom queries over the years. Many of them are available on our Query Examples page. Use the filters at the top to find a match. If you find a query that needs a small tweak, check with our support team – we may be able to make a small edit at no charge. If you need something really specialized, submit a Custom Query Request so we can send you a quote. Learn more about finding and using queries in this QuickTip video.
Reports help you manage your activities, track your revenue, and measure success. If you need a quick answer to a question about one of these reports, chat online with one of our friendly and knowledgeable support technicians. Need more in-depth troubleshooting help or need us to connect to your workstation? Give us a call, we’re here to help.
Categories: Growing Your Practice, Managing Revenue, Tips & Tricks, Your Software