After you upgraded to Dentrix G7.4, you probably noticed that many of the reports now have an additional column and show totals for “Offsetting Adjustments”—but you may not know what that means or why that matters.
What are Offsetting Adjustments?
Offsetting adjustments are adjustments types that are created automatically by the Allocate Credit Balances, Family Edit, or Inactivate Provider features of Dentrix. When these features do their work, they add adjustments to the Ledger that change balances between family members and providers.
For example, imagine that you inactivated DDS1 and replaced the provider with DDS2, and you selected to move the outstanding balances to the replacement provider. A patient’s Ledger where DDS1 was owed $100 would have two adjustments added to it automatically—a credit adjustment for $100 attributed to DDS1, and a charge adjustment for $100 attributed to DDS2. The two adjustments added together “offset” or cancel each other, so the account balance and the practice’s AR and aging reports do not change.
Why report them differently?
If these adjustments appeared as part of the mix of credit and charge adjustments on the reports, it could appear as if DDS1 had collected $100 and that DDS2 had produced $100. But they didn’t really. Those adjustments were just an accounting method to transfer the balance from one to another. Looking at those as part of the regular adjustment totals would make them appear larger than they really are.
So Dentrix G7.4 has modified many of the reports to show Offsetting Adjustments as being different than other adjustments.
In the transaction detail, you’ll see a “Y” (meaning “yes”) in the OS (Offsetting Adjustments) column.
The grand totals and provider totals each give a total of the offsetting adjustments. The grand total for offsetting adjustments will always add up to 0.00, while you will expect to see credits or charges among the individual provider totals.
For additional related information, read the following: