Open Dental Forum

I saw the 2 proposed methods for Calculating Writeoffs before receiving payment:
1. Create an alternate production and income report that uses date of service rather than date of payments when calculating writeoffs. We should be able to do this quickly.
2. Count writeoffs immediately upon completion of the procedures. The writeoffs would also affect the running patient balance. Writeoffs would need to be locked. When insurance was received, the writeoffs could not be edited. Instead, an adjusting entry could be made if the initial writeoffs were wrong. The advantage of doing this is that it leaves historical information intact. One additional complication is that we would need to verify that an invalid claim can be zeroed out or deleted while leaving historical writeoffs in place. We might migrate writeoffs over to the adjustment table to assist with these objectives.

I think # 2 would complicate things way too much, with too many adjustments. But I guess if they were few and far between it would be ok.


Unless it worked really slick (which I know Jordan can do :p) It doesn't sound too good to me, but maybe I am wrong. I like the way it works now. I wanted to make a request to keep an option to still do it the way it works now.

OK, good. Because we're getting complaints from PPO offices that they have no useful way to get an accurate production report. The writeoffs aren't removed from production until the insurance payment comes in.

Like you said, #2 would have to be really slick. Regardless of what we do now, that strategy remains our long-term strategy because it is the proper way to do things. Kind of like our current progress notes. Everything is automatically locked the moment it's entered, and yet, you can always "edit" it. To make it slick enough, we would have to simulate deletions, simulate edits, allow an audit view, etc. It gets really complicated, but the end result would make everyone happy.