One of the common questions among Dentrix users is, “How do I close out the month?” The Task Scheduler, which was introduced in Dentrix G6.5, helped to automate routine end-of-month tasks by breaking down the details of the month-end process. This gave practices the ability to pick and choose which processes they wanted to run.

The most common tasks performed when closing out the month are:

• Close Transactions – When you close transactions, completed procedures, payments, and adjustments can no longer be edited or deleted. Transactions are locked down and cannot be changed, which protects your practice. This process also causes patient account balances to age, and updates month-to-date and year-to-date production and collection numbers.
• Move Perio Exams to History – Performing this task ensures that perio exams can’t be changed or deleted.
• Move Clinical Notes to History – This process locks clinical notes so that they can’t be changed or deleted.
• Reset Insurance Benefits – By resetting insurance benefits, insurance maximums and deductibles will be reset at zero to begin a new insurance year for those insurance plans that renew during that month.

The Task Scheduler includes these common tasks and also many other options for tasks and reports that can be set to automatically run. For example, you can set up the Task Scheduler to have your Aging Report run on a certain date every month or select to apply finance charges on a daily basis. While this is a great feature for many offices, some offices, especially new Dentrix users, may find all the detailed options a little overwhelming.

Now, in Dentrix G7.5, you have the option to run the common month-end process mentioned above with one simple click. This would also be a quicker, easier option if you like to run your tasks manually instead of using the automated scheduler.

In this release, more intuitive icons have been added to the Task Scheduler to make it easier to use. The icons are consistent with the new icons in the new Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage window in Dentrix, like the pencil icon to edit and the red X to delete. This consistency will help your team to easily understand what each icon does.

There are also warnings that will alert you if reports aren’t able to run, and the warnings will remind you once a day. This is a great new feature. I’ve had offices tell me they aren’t sure if tasks and reports are running successfully, and then before they know it, three months have gone by without the month-end process.

These new features will improve the Task Scheduler to make it much more functional and easier to use. I think the one-click option to close the month will be a benefit to many offices. If you haven’t enjoyed working with the Task Scheduler yet, I encourage you to check out the new features in Dentrix G7.5.

Additional Information

For more information about new features in Dentrix G7.5, click here.

To learn more about the new features in Dentrix G7.5, and prepare your team for the upgrade, watch this on-demand webinar recording.