Why Accounting Advisory Is Essential For Your Clinic’s Pathway to Success

Running a clinic is tough. On one hand you have to balance patient care, and on the other hand, you have administrative tasks and staff management demanding your time as well.

As your business continues to grow, you’re finding yourself doing a lot more juggling and a lot less balancing.

Something needs to change.

It’s starting to feel inevitable. You’ve reviewed your options and feel like it’s time to consider outsourcing your dental bookkeeping and find accounting advisors that can maintain your books, provide you with financial management metrics and advise you on your business.

Your office manager can only do so much, and may not be a financial expert that can recognize issues and advise you on the books they are managing along with all the other priorities on their plate.

One of the most important decisions you can make for your clinic is choosing the right dental accounting firm.

Why You Need a Dental Accounting Advisor

Well, it’s simple. Think of your annual business goals for your clinics as landmarks you have to cross through. Chances are, you wouldn’t want to use a paper map to figure out where you need to go or whether you’ve made the wrong turn. Why would you when Google Maps exists to automatically document your trajectory, let you know when you need to reroute after a wrong turn, or help you find better solutions to get to your destination sooner.

Sure, an old-fashioned map can help you get to where you want to be eventually, but that requires you to have all your attention and effort focused on the more tedious and manual responsibilities of maintaining your course.

The very same can be said for having an accounting advisor when mapping your path to your clinic’s financial success and growth.

You need to regularly know what’s working, what isn’t, on a monthly or quarterly basis, in order to ensure you’re meeting your goals year after year. Cloud accounting and advisory accomplishes just that.

Understanding Where You’ve Been

When thinking about accounting, people typically think of it as a way to retrace the past. That’s only one element of it. To see where your business is headed, it’s important to see how far you’ve come, and what has worked and what hasn’t. The key to growth is overcoming stagnation. Seeing how you perform on a monthly basis helps set the tone for how you’ll be doing by the end of the year.

Where You Are Now

Your books need to be regularly updated and maintained on a monthly basis so you can have constant visibility into how you are currently making and spending money in your clinic, so that any urgent discrepancies can be addressed as they arise.

Your accounting advisor needs to be tracking the following metrics on an ongoing basis:

• Production— is it going up or down?
• Expenses—how much are you spending?
• Debt—how much do you owe, is it going down?
• Profit— are you in line with industry benchmarks?
• Accounts Receivable - Do you have any collection issues?
• Cash Flow—where and when is cash coming in and going out of your business?

This positions you to be prepared for the future. Which brings us to the following.

Where You’re Heading

Having a clear vision and a defined set of goals will make it easier to align yourself with where you’re headed and create the necessary actionable steps to move towards those said goals.

That’s why it’s important to find the right dental accounting advisors for your clinic, as they have the most visibility into your clinic’s financial health and are in the best position to advise you on how you can reach your goals using the most efficient route.

Accounting metrics are the roadmap to your destination. So long as you have consistent visibility on where you’re headed, you can proactively drive your business to where you want to be and go from here.

So how do you choose the right dental accountant and advisor for your practice?

Assess Your Needs

To run a high performance clinic, it is imperative that you have a reliable financial management system in place, consistent financial visibility and monthly/quarterly management reports, and a realistic financial plan to ensure successful operations and growth.

Take some time and thoroughly think through all the reasons your clinic would benefit from having an accounting advisory firm take over your clinic’s financial management.

Payroll, doctor’s pay, accounts receivable/payable, general bookkeeping, monthly/quarterly management reports, and annual reviews are all some of the services that dental bookkeeping firms that know their stuff would cover.

The Qualifications

When choosing to outsource your dental practice’s accounting and bookkeeping, you are entrusting a stranger to access your financial records. With that in mind, choose your bookkeeper very wisely. Research some options, take a deep dive into their website, their LinkedIn and social media. Ensure they are certified professional accountants. Request a background check and references.

Schedule a Discovery Call

Once you’ve narrowed down a list of bookkeepers you feel might be a good fit, reach out to book a discovery call and demo so you can meet with them to gauge their expertise and knowledge regarding your industry.

Prepare a list of questions to ask during your initial call.

Some good questions to ask are:

• How much experience do you have within the Canadian dental/medical industries?

• How do you provide services to dentists?

• Do you have automated systems? If so, what software do you use?

• What are the package plans that you offer and how would they fit with my needs?

• What type of long-term financial planning services do you offer?

• How do you normally go about taking over the book from either the clinic or previous bookkeeper?

Make the decision Once you have a better understanding of your options, and based on how well your discovery call goes, book a follow-up and walk your potential bookkeeper through your concerns, goals and how you currently manage your books to better assess how their advice and consulting may align with your long term goals.

Now you are properly equipped with the necessary information regarding your dental bookkeeping and options and are prepared to outsource your books to the right team that will help you reach your goals and beyond.