The last patient checked out at 5:10 PM. The drawer has cash and checks in it, the card terminal has a batch waiting, and the practice software has a day’s worth of charges, payments and adjustments. End of day is the ten minutes that makes those three agree, and it is the one control that catches most mistakes while they are still small.
What is the end of day report?
Every practice system has one. In Open Dental it is the Daily Production and Income report plus the day’s payments. In Dentrix it is the Day Sheet (Charges and Receipts). In Eaglesoft it is End of Day processing, which produces the Day Sheet and the Deposit Slip together. The names differ. The content is the same: every procedure completed, every payment posted and every adjustment made that day, with totals.
What should match what?
Three comparisons, every day.
| Compare | With | Should be |
|---|---|---|
| Patient payments on the day sheet, by method | Cash and checks in the drawer, plus the card batch total | Equal |
| Insurance payments on the day sheet | The EOBs and checks posted today | Equal |
| Procedures completed on the day sheet | The appointments marked complete on today’s schedule | Every completed visit has its procedures posted |
If the first comparison is off by $40, find the $40 now. A payment posted to the wrong patient, a card run twice, a check recorded as cash. Each takes minutes today and an afternoon in three weeks.
The checklist
- Run the day sheet for today only.
- Count cash and checks. Settle the card batch. Write the three totals on the sheet.
- Compare patient payments by method with those totals. Resolve any difference before going further.
- Check every appointment on today’s schedule has a status of complete and its procedures posted. A visit left as scheduled is production that never gets billed.
- Read the adjustments. Each should have a reason. Courtesy, senior discount, PPO write-off. An adjustment with no reason and a round number is the first red flag.
- Look for anything deleted or edited after posting. Open Dental’s Audit Trail, Dentrix Audit Trail Reports and Eaglesoft’s audit under Utilities all show this for the day.
- Confirm tomorrow’s schedule: unconfirmed appointments and patients with a balance due at check-in.
- Sign and date the sheet. Keep it with the deposit slip.
A worked example
Day sheet totals for a Tuesday.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Production (completed procedures) | $8,130 |
| Patient payments: cash | $220 |
| Patient payments: checks | $1,140 |
| Patient payments: card | $1,820 |
| Insurance payments | $2,960 |
| Adjustments | $410 (minus) |
The drawer holds $220 cash and $1,140 in checks. The card batch is $1,400. That is $420 short of the day sheet’s card total.
The audit trail for the day shows a $420 card payment posted at 2:00 PM and deleted at 2:14 PM from workstation WS-03, with nothing re-entered. The patient’s account now shows the balance again. Either the card was declined and the deletion is correct, in which case the patient needs a call, or the card went through and the ledger is wrong, in which case the deletion is the problem. Either way, it was found on Tuesday evening instead of at month end.
The $410 of adjustments turn out to be two PPO write-offs and a $50 senior discount, each with a note. Fine.
What are the red flags?
- A payment deleted and not re-entered the same day.
- An adjustment with no reason, especially a round number, especially on an account with a recent payment.
- The card batch lower than the day sheet’s card total.
- A completed appointment with no procedures posted, or procedures posted with a date other than today.
- The same user both posting and adjusting the same account on the same day, when two people were on.
None of these is proof of anything. Each is a question worth asking the same evening.
What Calibic adds
Front Desk and End of Day is LIVE for Open Dental and Dentrix, and Eaglesoft coverage is partial. Calibic reads the ledger tables read-only and shows the day’s production, payments by method and adjustments as they post, so the first comparison can be made before the drawer is counted. Protect flags the changes made after posting, with the before and after values, the time and (on Open Dental) the user and workstation kept as evidence. The daily digest lands in the evening with the figures and the flags on one page.
Calibic does not settle the card batch, post a payment or write anything to the practice system. The day sheet from your software stays the record you sign.
See the closing view on the Front Desk and End of Day product page. The sibling guide on dental front desk daily tasks covers the rest of the day, and the office manager page shows how the daily, weekly and monthly checks fit together.