Best Practice Guidelines: Medical | Dental | Allieds

During the monthly internal control process, all transactions for the month can be analysed and cross-checked to ensure their accuracy.

Correct monthly reporting will ensure that reliable financial feedback is given to management and auditors and correct payments are made to creditors (e.g. suppliers and assistants) andstaff whose income is calculated based on agreed income types.

The following tasks and reports will be discussed pertaining to monthly controls:

Debtor & Creditor Controls

Billing is one of the most important functions to be completed on a daily basis and you have to check the billing and receipt controls on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The checks are different for each time period.

Monthly you will complete the following debtors' checks:

• Episode Management (used by e.g. orthopaedic practices)
• Journals
• Interest on outstanding accounts (If the practice is using this function)
• Assistants

Monthly you will complete the following creditors, stock and accounting checks:

• Statements from the Creditors and Suppliers
• Credit Notes / Debit Notes
• Payments (Cheques)
• Stock Control
• Accounting control
• Journal Report
• Batch Statement run
• Age Analysis report

Credit Control

Credit control is an ongoing process throughout the month. The following are additional credit control functions and reports that can be completed monthly:

• Handovers of bad debt
• Journal report
• Batch statement run
• Age analysis report

Remember that credit control is only efficient if done regularly by following up with medical aids and private patients on overdue accounts.

Reconciliation

Reconciliation of accounts and reports will indicate where there are mistakes that were missed during the daily and weekly controls.

The following accounts and reports must be reconciled to make sure all transactions on the system are reflected in the statements and bank accounts:

• Debtor and Creditor transaction drill down report & the Age Analysis for the Debtors and Creditors.
• Main Cashbooks (Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, Home and Car Loans, Petty Cash and any other accounts that you receive statements for every month)
• Auxiliary cashbooks (Cash, Card, Electronic and ERA's cashbooks)
• Stock (Variance report, Stock on hand)
• Trial balance.

Month end

Practices that are set up for a month-end system must finalise their month ends at the end of every period.

There are two types of month ends on GoodX because GoodX is a double-entry financial system:

• Debtors month end
• Financial period month end - the month end closes the financial period and opens the next financial period for the next month's transactions. This prevents report changes due to transactions being posted in the incorrect periods.

Both month-ends need to be completed.

Budget figures must be checked on a monthly basis against the actual expenses and income to ensure the practice is keeping to the budget amounts. When the budget amount is getting close to the actual amount, all the personnel responsible for the expenses must be notified.

Monthly reports

• Confirm that all monthly reports have been printed or saved and have been sent to the correct manager/practitioner.
• Confirm that all information on the Monthly reports is correct and complete.
• Make sure you understand the reports and the outcome of the reports that were printed and used.
• Compare the budget figures to the actual figures.

Monthly Backup

Confirm backups are being made and copied to external sources that are kept off-site.

Please read the GoodX Learning Centre (IT & Technical > Data Management) for a proper understanding of the best practice backup regime.

GoodX Web App and Cloud clients' backups are completed and safely stored by GoodX to alleviate the burden of keeping up-to-date backups by the practice.