What makes a great dental accountant?
Having co-founded a dental accounting firm, we’ve seen a lot over the years. Business owners rely on their accountant not only to do compliance work (tax preparation and filing, payroll filings (if offered), monthly reports) but to take that a step further and help them proactively plan. These are 5 tips I would urge any dental practice owner to consider when hiring or looking for an accountant.
Dental Focused
Accountants can only provide as much value to the degree of their experience. Many accountants are able to file taxes or help you plan for taxes, however, many don’t know dentistry. Having monthly financials that are organized in a way to measure against other practices, provide key insights, and a good overview of the financial health of your practice is key.
You may have a tax preparer you love, but ensure with your monthly accounting/bookkeeping you have someone that knows dentistry and is invested in constantly trying to provide greater insight and value to you. We’ve seen a lot of bad bookkeeping out there simply because the bookkeepers don’t live in the dental world.
Proactive
The biggest complaint I’ve seen with dentists moving over to our services is a lack of response when there is a question. A proactive accountant does not drop everything to answer your email or call, but they do take initiative and are responsive. If you regularly hear crickets in response to questions, that can be typical but should not be the expectation. Finding an accountant that you trust is looking after your practice financially and is forward thinking goes a long way to helping you create a dynamic practice.
Modern
Having modern accounting systems (QuickBooks Online or Xero, Gusto or OnPay (payroll), and visual reporting allows you and your accounting team to have 24/7 access to finances. Modern systems create greater accuracy in reporting and also provide more tools to go beyond just sending a QuickBooks report but a visual overview on the health of your practice.
Value Driven
Value driven relating to your accountant simply means, they care about providing you incredible value. You will likely pay more for their services, but, you trust and know that what they are delivering and providing has a much greater value than cheaper options. Some accounting firms charge a lot and you get little in return, others are obsessed with the client experience (how you experience their services) and therefore are always asking how to provide more value to you. One example we did with our firm was to provide a yearly wage report for our clients. This would should the average, median, high, and low wages paid for different staffing roles within our client base. This allowed dental practices to have a plumb-line with hiring new employees on what other practices are paying for similar roles.
Visual Reporting
Different practice owners find different value in the financial reports. Some would say they just want to focus on production and the finances will work themselves out. The goal in reporting the numbers is to focus on people and profitability. Looking at the numbers, and being able to visual track what they mean not just what they are, allows you to make changes needed to grow and improve your practice and hopefully your enjoyment of your business. We’ve had dentists slowly cut low paying insurance plans and realize they could do less work and make more money. They didn’t have to accept every plan and just keep packing their schedule, they could instead focus on quality, patient experience, and creating the practice they want. You can’t do this without knowing what the numbers mean and being able to make decisions. Having reports that give you insight into the health of your practice is key.
There are tools that will cost you hundreds per month just for the reporting aspect, we find starting simple and looking at reports monthly is the best place to start. You often don’t need to $8,000 daily reporting dashboard.
