Bookkeeping can be an extremely time-consuming process that keeps you from committing one hundred percent of your time towards your patient's care.
Luckily, there are some helpful tips you can follow that will not only make your bookkeeping process a much simpler one. These tips can also help you save both time and money while providing your clinic with current and accurate financial data.
1. Separate your personal and business accounts
It's not uncommon for business owners to use their personal funds to set up their clinics. But this does not mean that you should be mixing your personal and business accounts. Doing so will make it considerably more complicated to manage your bookkeeping. Plus, it looks unprofessional if you need to show your books to lenders or investors.
When you keep your clinic's books separate from your personal finances, you can track your business's cash flow much more easily. You can also ensure that your assets are protected against legal actions. Tax season also becomes a simpler time of year when your accountant can easily identify tax write-offs.
2. Leverage your practice management software for bookkeeping data
There are many practice management software that can help improve the efficiency of your clinic. Tools like the Jane App or Mindbody can be used for scheduling, storing patient data, and obtaining important accounting information like billing, revenue, and payroll data.
Ideally, you would want practice management software that integrates with your accounting software. Unfortunately, most practice management software does not offer these integrations. You can, however, export your sales reports from your practice management software and import them to your accounting software.
For example, you can easily export information from the Jane App to QuickBooks Online, significantly reducing the need for manual data entry.
3. Use a cloud-based accounting software
Using a spreadsheet-based program like Excel may be tempting to handle your bookkeeping needs. However, excel is prone to errors, which could leave you with inaccurate financial data. Switching to cloud-based accounting software can better help you manage your bookkeeping data.
A cloud-based program allows you to have access to all of your clinic's financial data while you’re on the go. It is also the perfect choice if you have multiple locations and need to be able to view how each one is performing separately.
4. Customize your chart of accounts
Your chart of accounts dictates the manner in which your bookkeeping is organized. Planning out what areas of your finances you want to focus on and measure is crucial for proper financial visibility.
As a physiotherapy clinic, you may want to consider tracking your revenue by category and therefore set up your accounts to show treatment revenue and product revenue separately.
You also need to categorize your expenses appropriately. Clinical wages for physiotherapists who treat patients should be categorized under your cost of goods sold, while your admin staff wages should be placed under your operating expenses.
Talking to an accountant or bookkeeping professional will help you to best understand how your charts of accounts should be set up for your particular business.
5. Use an expense management tool
An expense management tool like Dext Prepare can maximize your productivity and make the entire expense management process much easier.
You can take a photo of your receipt or invoice, upload it to the application and they’ll handle the rest. Using their Optical Character Recognition technology, critical data is extracted from these documents and uploaded to your accounting software as a transaction. The document is also saved to the cloud so you no longer need to store the physical document.
Dext Prepare minimizes the amount of manual data entry that needs to be done while leaving an audit trail for your expenses.
6. Automate your payables process
Automating your payables process not only saves you a significant amount of time but can also help keep your vendor relationships healthy and allow you to take advantage of early payment discounts.
To automate the payment process, you can use Dext Prepare to upload your invoices and then export this data to Plooto. Plooto will remind you when payments are due and automatically arrange for payments to be electronically sent to your vendors after you have approved them. This saves time on manual data entry and eliminates the need for writing and mailing out cheques.
7. Hire a professional bookkeeper
In many physiotherapy clinics, the receptionist is given the task of handling the books. This isn't usually the best method.
Hiring a professional bookkeeper with the proper qualifications will ensure that your books are managed on a timely and accurate basis. On top of entering and coding your transactions to the right accounts, they will be able to provide you with the financial statements that your clinic requires to make timely business decisions.
You can also consider outsourcing your bookkeeping to a third-party bookkeeping firm. This will give you access to the professional assistance you require while saving you a substantial amount of money.
8. Stay up to date on your receivables.
When a patient's claims are remitted to an insurance provider, it can often take a considerable amount of time for your clinic to receive reimbursement. This delay can have a negative impact on your cash flow.
By staying up to date on your receivables and following up on late payments regularly, you can have better control over your cash flow. Ensure that any denied claims or late payments are followed up on promptly.
By following these helpful tips, you can speed up your clinic’s bookkeeping process, improve your cash flow, and get timely insights into your clinic’s financial performance.
If you need assistance managing your physiotherapy clinic's books, we can help. We can help you streamline your bookkeeping process and provide you with timely accurate financials every month. To find out how we can assist you, contact us today.
How We Select and Evaluate Our Recommended Software
We thoroughly research and test the apps we include in our regular workflow for Client bookkeeping services. After deciding on criteria for evaluating the software and then researching the app itself, we tested the app, noting its strengths and weaknesses. We then work with the app for at least a few weeks before deciding whether to recommend it to our readers. We use the software as it was designed for its intended tasks. For a detailed walk-through of how we select and evaluate software, please see the details of our process.
