Let’s be real…bookkeeping sucks, it’s tedious, can take a lot of time and it’s boring. You can do it yourself, but is it worth your time? You know what your production per hour is, so what’s the trade-off between DIY or paying an expert to do it? Remember, however, that just because you outsource this task, doesn’t mean you overlook reviewing the books every month to ensure accuracy. Only you know your business, and therefore only you can create the rules and guidelines for how your bookkeeper should properly categorize your expenses.
For years, we did it ourselves. Between work, kids and activities, more often than not we found ourselves behind with our books. As a result, the reports we needed to provide to DSI to truly track our overhead fell behind, and it often snowballed into hours and hours of catching up trying to categorize expenses we have since forgotten about.
I look at bookkeeping as one of those “stepping over dollars to pick up pennies” exercises. Sure you can save a few hundred dollars, but mistakes can cost you more in the end. That was us. We THOUGHT we were good at it, but once we found a GREAT bookkeeper, we realized that maybe we missed out on some valuable depreciation and expenses just because we made some minor mistakes.
We have since chosen to outsource to CapForge Dental. After evaluating several companies, their backend tech and dedicated team were a great fit for what we needed.
Here’s our process:
- Every month we upload our loan and bank statements to the dedicated CapForge Dental portal.
- CapForge Dental categorizes income and expenses within QuickBooks.
- CapForge Dental reconciles the books.
- We receive reports on the 15th of every month to review.
- If they see anything out of the ordinary, they will ask us to categorize it so they can reconcile properly.
The portal is well-designed and easy to use. Most of all, things don’t get lost with multiple emails going back and forth with our bookkeeper.
Our Main Dashboard:
Where We Upload Files:
List of Accounts That Show What Has Been Completed:
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Best of all, the service is only $450 a month for DSN members, and $475 a month for non DSN members.
DSN worked with CapForge Dental to provide a list of dental charts of accounts and negotiated pricing that was fair and less than what a CPA would charge.
Why Not Have Your CPA Do It?
What we found was that it was a little more expensive for CPAs to do this level of work, but we also felt that in some cases, it’s important to separate these activities so that there are some checks and balances. A bookkeeper may make a mistake, and your CPA will see it. If the CPA is doing the books, it’s up to YOU to find any mistakes that were made. I personally like the idea of having three sets of eyes on this…or if you’re with DSI…it’s four sets of eyes. Mine, CPA, Bookkeeper and an Analyst (DSI).
To wrap up, here is why a solid bookkeeper is so important.
Conclusion: Bookkeeping is a vital aspect of financial management for dental offices. By accurately tracking finances, managing costs, ensuring tax compliance and saving valuable time, dental practices can thrive and grow. Investing in proper bookkeeping, whether through skilled in-house staff or outsourced professional services, is a solid investment in the future success of the dental office. Take control of your finances, save costs, and allocate more time toward patient care by prioritizing bookkeeping for your dental practice. If you have the capability to do it yourself, great! If not, then consider outsourcing this task so that you can focus on what matters most to you.
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