Hearing care professionals spend years studying the science surrounding how people hear, the causes of hearing loss, how it can be treated and how it can be prevented. They are masters of their incredibly specialized domain. Today, across the United States, we have over 10 thousand private practices where the nearly 45 million individuals who suffer from hearing loss are able to seek treatment. Understanding these facts and recognizing the disproportionate number of professionals to those that need treatment begs a question the industry needs to address: How do we improve business processes so hearing care professionals are able to spend more time with patients?
Those outside the hearing care industry may be surprised to learn how much time is spent on the business end of maintaining a private practice. Far too often the management aspects take center stage and the time left to spend with patients is cut short.
How do we remedy this dire situation that is only getting worse? The following 4 part blog series examines the different business aspects that are required to run a private practice. We’ll explore different solutions to help automate workflows, streamline processes, eliminate double entry and more. All the solutions we examine share one thing in common – they are designed to help hearing care professionals spend more time with patients.
Part 1: Streamline Accounts Receivable
Properly managing accounts receivable (AR) can be make-or-break for many small to medium-sized businesses. Entire careers are devoted to AR. Large companies have entire teams and departments dedicated to the function. Optimizing accounts receivable is critical. Unfortunately, it can also be incredibly time-consuming. Especially when resources are scarce and systems aren’t synchronized. It’s not surprising that 58% of owners surveyed reported they found bookkeeping to be the most draining aspect of running their business.
One of the first steps a practice can take to free up more time for patients is to synchronize their practice management software with their accounting software. The benefits of this integration will be seen immediately – sales data is entered once rather than multiple times, eliminating time-consuming double entry. Records synchronize automatically, eliminating the risk of human error.
The Sycle QuickBooks Sync tool allows you to easily streamline your AR. Sales, exchanges, returns, and payments are entered into Sycle, allowing clinics to capture powerful data about their business. These transactions are transferred to QuickBooks using a simple, accurate and time-saving process.
With Sycle QuickBooks Sync your patients are synced as QuickBooks customers. Patients will only appear in the QuickBooks customer list as a result of the sync process for purchase in Sycle. In other words, QuickBooks will not necessarily contain a complete list of all Sycle patients; only those who have had a new or updated purchase since you began syncing with QuickBooks. When a Purchase Summary is synced, the associated patient is either added to QuickBooks (along with their Sycle ID number) if they do not yet exist or updated in QuickBooks if they already exist. Each item on a Purchase Summary in Sycle has its own transaction date. When these items are synced to QuickBooks they are organized based on date. Purchases are synced to QuickBooks as invoices. Returns are synced to QuickBooks as credit memos.
The Sycle QuickBooks Sync tool has quickly become one of Sycle’s most widely adopted integrations and is used by thousands of practices across the United States.
