Reporting is an important part of tracking and managing your practice’s revenue and expenses to make sure you’re on your way to reaching your goals. Integrated payments that sync with your practice software open up a world of insights that you can delve into to see how your practice is tracking across a range of metrics.
This doesn’t mean you should download every report available in your practice management software every day. But, there are a number of key reports that you should review on a regular, if not daily basis, to stay on top of the numbers and keep your practice running smoothly.
Run these daily reports
On a day-to-day basis, you’ll want to review your preferred financial reports to help make sure your books are balanced and to keep an eye on your revenue and expenses. Useful reports to help achieve this include the Cashier Balance, Deposit Slip or Period Totals report, alongside the Summary report.
You may also want to run your reconciliation reports and compare these with the daily reports in your practice management software to make sure the numbers match up, and review any exceptions or fraud reports that are available to you.
Run these financial reports
Keeping track of your finances is one of the key ways to ensure your practice continues to enjoy healthy returns. Running balance reports lets you reconcile the money you took in a day with what you charged your customers. If there are variances it’s easier to correct them and fix the cause if you catch them quickly. A pet owner won’t begrudge a call the next day to say their payment didn’t go through – but they might not be as understanding if you don’t call them until six months have passed.
The Exception and Fraud reports are also important to review when available. If a bank flags a payment to your practice as fraudulent this means that the money won’t be deposited into your account. If you catch these transactions early on, you have a higher chance of stating your case and keeping the money than if you leave it for a few weeks, or even months.
Keep your books balanced
Casting your eye over your cash flow on a daily basis means you’re able to catch any variances almost as soon as they happen, so you can fix them, or account for them at the time. It may also help you catch operational processes that aren’t working correctly, like poor data entry or a glitch in your integrated payment processing system.
Much like keeping an eye on your patients to make sure they’re still in good health and resolving any issues early, you need to keep an eye on your cash flow. It’s important to make sure incomings are outgoings are running as expected, to prevent any nasty financial surprises down the line – at which point they become harder to resolve.
Understand your practice trends
Running your daily financial reports also gives you a good indication of trends in your practice, what services your team is performing, and what products are or aren’t selling well. This, in turn, can help you identify how you’re tracking against your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and goals and what changes you could make to help make reaching them easier.
Daily reports are a great way to stay on top of your financial health and understand how your practice is tracking on a day-to-day basis. Catching any variances early on means you’re more likely to be able to fix or resolve any issues and keep your financials tracking in the right direction.