What did you do with those receipts from the Super Bowl party? How did you itemize your Sam’s Club run? Did your staff remember to turn in the party store receipts? Are you tossing them in a shoebox, so-to-speak, only to give them to your CPA at year-end? Whatever your process, try to calculate the time spent in the life and movement of that receipt. Try to recall the process that pushes that receipt forward and the time and effort that goes into managing that. Double that because your CPA has the same challenges.
Finding the Proper Categorization
Modern dental accounting tools allow for software/phone apps that dramatically reduce the time and effort involved in expense management in dental practice. Now, for that meal receipt, take a picture at the lunch or dinner table with your smartphone and forget about it. The photograph will be read by artificial intelligence and, over time, will be categorized appropriately with no input from you. The receipt is not only visually recorded but now searchable by all data points: vendor, locale, amount, date, etc. if needed later in case of an audit. In the modern dental office, you absolutely should have a digital-document-management system in place for a couple of key reasons:
- Eliminate time and effort = improve efficiency. Click the photo and you and your staff can move on to other things. With simultaneous dental CPA access, your accountant can review the coding of these transactions with proper support. The data is accurate, accessible, and processed completely in one step.
- Reduce your risk. By being searchable by all those data points, you can access them at any time for any reason to support an audit or review in your practice. Regardless of whether you are conservative or aggressive on your definition of “meals” with the IRS, you better have the receipts for the meal in question for the auditor. If you don’t have the receipt, the auditor will disallow the transaction, no question.
This one example of utilizing technology in the dental practice to reduce stress and increase efficiency in process is only one of many options available to the 21st-century dental accounting process. Visit Crossroads Tax Advisors to learn more about the benefits of working with a dental accounting firm.