All Collections
Dental Intelligence Analytics
Collections Board
Collections Board: Why the AR Aging Balance is Different In Your Practice Management Software
Collections Board: Why the AR Aging Balance is Different In Your Practice Management Software
This article discusses how DI calculates the AR Aging Total and why it might not match your Practice Management Software total
Grace Richards avatar
Written by Grace Richards
Updated over a week ago

How Does Dental Intelligence Calculate AR Aging Totals?

Dental Intelligence’s AR (accounts receivable) Aging metric will give you the total dollar amount your practice stands to collect from your patients if every patient balance was paid today. Dental Intelligence actually has different parameters & factors than the AR Aging Report in your Practice Management Software (Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental). Because of those differences, the total you see in di. will never match what your see in your Practice Management Software.

To learn more about the AR Aging metric in Dental Intelligence, click here.

What Causes Discrepancies?

One of the main factors is actually due to patient credits. Your Practice Management Software will subtract all outstanding patient credits from your AR total, giving you a total that reflects your total AR balance minus your patient credit balances.

For example, if your practice had $100k in AR and $50k in patient credits, your PMS would report an AR total of around $50k, whereas Dental Intelligence would report a total closer to $100k. There are other parameters that Dental Intelligence will include that your Practice Management Software will not and vice versa.

Another contributing factor is the Dental Intelligence sync with your Practice Management Software. If changes have been made in your Practice Management Software since your last sync, this can cause a difference in AR totals as they will not yet reflect in Dental Intelligence. To learn more about processing the Dental Intelligence Sync, click here.

Although Dental Intelligence will never match the AR totals that you see in your Practice Management Software, we will always match on a patient to patient basis. Every patient’s family balance from your Practice Management Software will be the same balance you see in Dental Intelligence. If you suspect that a patient’s balance is different in Dental Intelligence, refer to the following information according to your Practice Management Software:

Dentrix:

If you use Dentrix and notice discrepancies for multiple patients, you will need to have Dentrix support do a database cleanup, this acts as a refresh. Once this is completed and Dental Intelligence processes the sync, any differences should be corrected.

OpenDental:

If you use OpenDental and notice discrepancies for multiple patients, run this report in Open Dental to correct the discrepancy.

Eaglesoft:

If you use Eaglesoft and notice discrepancies for multiple patients, reach out to our support team.


Discrepancies for a Single Patient:

If you notice discrepancies for a Single patient's AR total, open and close the ledger in your Practice Management Software. Once you've done this and the Dental Intelligence sync is able to process, it will update!


Related Resources

The following resource will give you a more in-depth explanation on how to use the Collections Board:

Did this answer your question?