Dental Bookkeepers
Melbourne, Australia Registered BAS Agent 26193863 0422 254 062
Bookkeeping & BAS for dental practices  ·  Established practice, Melbourne

Dental Bookkeepers

Written from inside the surgery — what we've learned reconciling patient fees, purchasing and payroll across independent and group dental practices.

Anyone can process a transaction. Experience knows what to ask.

Practices rarely lose money because the software is wrong. They lose it because nobody asked why Thursday's banking was $340 short, or why a lab invoice was paid twice for the same crown.

The approach  ·  Bookkeeping starts with understanding the practice, not the software

A dental practice does not take money the way a shop does. On a single Thursday a chair can generate a health fund rebate settled through a HICAPS terminal, a gap paid by card, a child's treatment claimed through the CDBS, a veteran's item billed to DVA, a state voucher redeemed at reception, and a deposit on a treatment plan that has not started yet. Six revenue streams, six settlement cycles, one bank account.

Software will happily record all of it. What software will not do is notice that the HICAPS settlement for the 30th landed on the 1st, that a rejected Medicare claim quietly dropped out of the batch, or that the receptionist processed a refund at the terminal instead of raising a credit. Those are questions, and questions come from having sat in the practice while it happened.

That is the whole of our method. We reconcile takings to the source that paid them, not to a lump sum. We check that something was received before it is paid for. We read the award before we set the pay rate. And when a number does not make sense, we go and find out why rather than posting it to suspense and moving on.

None of this is exotic. It is simply what you end up doing after years of working inside practices, watching what breaks, and building the habits that stop it breaking again. Every one of those lessons was paid for once. Our clients get it for free.

What the experience buys youFour areas
Patient fees

Every dollar explained

Takings reconciled to the payer — HICAPS, Medicare, CDBS, DVA, state vouchers, private and payment plans — so the bank, the practice software and the ledger tell the same story.

Purchasing

Received before paid

A simple internal control for consumables, lab work and implants: nothing is paid until someone confirms it arrived and matches what was ordered.

Payroll

Built on the award

Pay rates, penalties, leave and superannuation set from the relevant award and reporting obligations — informed by Fair Work matters we've seen up close.

The practice

Setups to group clinics

New practice setups, established independents and multi-site groups — and the working relationships with tax agents, lawyers and brokers that keep them moving.

The claim deskPatient fee reconciliation

Six ways a chair gets paid, and six ways it goes quiet

Reconciling a dental practice means treating each payment source as its own small system with its own timing, its own remittance and its own failure mode. Lumping them into "income received" is how money goes missing without anyone noticing for months.

Here is what we watch, and what usually goes wrong with each.

SourceWhat it paysWhere it goes quiet
HICAPS Health fund rebate claimed at the terminal Settlement lands the next business day and often as one lump covering several patients, so the daily banking never matches the daily takings unless it's mapped back.
Medicare / CDBS Children's dental benefit, bulk billed Claims are lodged in batches. A rejection comes back into a report that nobody has been asked to read, and the item simply stops being chased.
DVA Veteran treatment on the department's fee arrangements Remittances arrive separately and on their own cycle, and item rules differ from private billing, so partial payments look like short payments.
State vouchers Public dental vouchers redeemed at the practice Reimbursement runs on a different timetable to everything else and is often tracked on paper at the front desk rather than in the software.
Gaps & private The patient's own share, at the terminal or by transfer Refunds processed on the terminal instead of as a credit, which reduces the banking without ever touching the patient's account.
Payment plans Deposits and instalments toward planned treatment Money in the bank before the treatment is done isn't income yet, and it's routinely treated as though it were.
The questions we ask

When a claim is rejected, who sees it, and what happens next?

If a patient asks for a refund at the desk, what does the practice do — and does the ledger ever find out?

Which balance in your accounts is money you've been paid but haven't earned yet?

Purchasing controlsConfirm before you pay

The invoice is not the evidence. The delivery is.

Dental supply spend is high-frequency and low-attention: gloves and burs on standing order, a lab invoice for six crowns, an implant ordered against one patient's case. It is the easiest place in a practice to pay for something twice, or to keep paying for something that stopped arriving.

The control is unglamorous and it works. Four steps, in order, and payment does not happen until all four have.

  1. The order is raised and recorded

    Who ordered it, for which supplier, and — for lab work and implants — against which patient or case.

  2. Goods are checked in against the docket

    Someone in the practice confirms what physically arrived, and what didn't. Short deliveries and back-orders get noted at the door, not discovered on a statement.

  3. The invoice is matched

    Supplier invoice against order against delivery. Price changes, substituted items and duplicate invoices for the same lab job surface here.

  4. Payment is released

    Only what has been ordered, received and matched gets paid — and it gets paid once.

The questions we ask

Who in the practice is allowed to order, and who is allowed to pay? If it's the same person, that's worth a conversation.

When a lab invoice arrives, can you tell which case it belongs to without asking the dentist?

Payroll & employmentFoundations, set once, properly

Payroll problems are almost never payroll problems

By the time a pay run looks wrong, the mistake is usually months old and sits somewhere upstream: the wrong classification at hire, an hourly rate agreed in a conversation and never checked against the award, a Saturday clinic rostered without penalties, or an arrangement that treats someone as a contractor when the working relationship says otherwise.

We've been close enough to Fair Work matters to know how they start — and that they almost always start small. A dental assistant classified a level below where their duties sit. Leave accrued on the wrong hours. Superannuation calculated on a base that quietly excludes part of what's actually ordinary earnings.

So we set the foundations before we run anything: classification and rate against the applicable award, allowances and penalties, leave entitlements and loading, superannuation on the right earnings base, and Single Touch Payroll categorised so the reporting matches the reality. Then the pay run is just arithmetic.

Where the answer genuinely depends on the facts — associate agreements, contractor arrangements, payroll tax across a group — we say so, and we work it through with your accountant or employment lawyer rather than guessing.

The questions we ask

Which award covers each person on your roster, and at what classification level?

If Fair Work asked for the last seven years of records tomorrow, what would you be able to hand over?

Practice & advisersWhere we've worked

Different practices, the same underlying questions

New setups. Getting the chart of accounts, GST treatment and payroll right from the first week is far cheaper than fixing it in year two. Fitout costs, equipment finance and pre-opening expenses all need to land in the right place before the first patient sits down.

Independent practices. Usually one principal, a small team, and a front desk carrying more administrative load than anyone acknowledges. The work here is removing steps, not adding them.

Group clinics. Multiple locations, associate percentage arrangements, shared services and inter-entity charges. Consistency between sites matters more than clever reporting at any one of them.

Across all of them, we work alongside the people already advising you. Tax agents get books they don't have to rebuild at year end. Lawyers get clean records when an associate agreement or a sale is being drafted. Brokers get figures that hold up when finance is being assessed. We're comfortable being the least visible person in that group — the books just have to be right.

The questions we ask

Who else advises the practice, and what do they need from the books that they're not getting?

If you added a second site next year, what would break first?

We don't just process transactions. We apply years of lived experience to help dental practices run stronger, with less stress.
The guiding principle
NotesSmall things that cost real money
The refund that wasn't

A refund put through on the terminal reduces the day's banking but leaves the patient's account showing paid. The takings look short, the debtor looks settled, and both are wrong until someone reconciles to the payer.

The deposit that looked like profit

Instalments toward orthodontic or implant treatment sit in the bank for months before the work is done. Treated as income on receipt, they inflate a good quarter and hollow out the next one.

The crown paid for twice

A lab statement and a lab invoice for the same case, three weeks apart, both approved by different people. Matching to the delivery docket catches it before the payment run does not.

An invitation

Let's spend 30 minutes talking about your practice.

We'll ask good questions, listen, and show you where time or compliance can improve. No presentation, no pressure — and if the answer is that your books are already in good shape, we'll tell you that too.

Call 0422 254 062
Speak with
Sunia Moala — 0422 254 062
Suba Lafendi — 0426 890 090
Email
practice@dentalbookkeepers.com.au
Post
PO Box 910, Springvale South VIC 3172
Tax Practitioners Board — Registered BAS Agent 26193863