5 Characteristics Every Great Dental Accountant Has

Handling dental accounting for your firm can be a truly challenging endeavor. On one hand, it’s most likely not the only role you fill on a daily basis. On the other hand, however, accounting is perhaps the most important thing a dental practice can focus on aside from patient care and satisfaction. It takes the right set of traits to be a truly effective dental accountant, and it can help to ask yourself whether or not you have them.
Don’t forget—everyone has room for improvement in one area or another. With that said, here are five characteristics that every dental accountant needs to have in order to be truly great at their job.

1. Proactive Attitude

There are essentially two types of people in life—those who are proactive, and those who are reactive. While many of us maintain a balance between the two to some extent (or at least try to), some find themselves leaning more in one direction than another. Being reactive means waiting until it’s too late to fix something, taking things too personally and generally going about daily business with a constant undercurrent of anxiety. Being reactive, on the other hand, means one very important thing—thinking ahead.
Dental accountants require a proactive mindset so as to avoid allowing themselves to get into situations they may have difficulty getting out of. Just as you want to be proactive about your dental health, you absolutely must be proactive about your approach to dental accounting.

2. Accountability

It may sound like a slight pun to say that an accountant needs to be “accountable,” but the truth behind this statement simply cannot be stressed enough. Accountability means everything, especially when it comes to someone who will be handling important financial and patient information each and every day on the job. It should go without saying that the person in charge of accounting at your practice should be trustworthy, but problems have arisen from not hiring the right person to handle such tasks on plenty of occasions.

3. A Simplistic Approach

For those who really get into numbers and math, accounting can open up a whole host of different roads to go down. Every dental accountant has their own set of processes to work from, but that’s not to say that they’re all as efficient as they can be. In short, some people overcomplicate things way more than is necessary. Across the board, profitable dental practices utilize simple processes to handle their financials, which eliminates a great deal of potential for human error and simply makes everyone’s lives easier. Esoteric accounting methods can surely have their advantages, but simplicity will always win out in the end.

4. Organizational Skills

Being a dental accountant is sort of like being an interior designer or professional arranger, except instead of furniture and artwork, you’re dealing with an endless supply of numbers and financial data. The importance of working with the right accounting software suite cannot be overemphasized enough as a tool for minimizing what could end up being costly errors, but the person behind the curtain needs to also have exceptional organizational skills in order to keep things on track. After all, there’s nothing worse than watching someone drown in their own stack of papers as they attempt to straighten out patient financial data.

5. Tax Knowledge

At the end of the day, you may find it beneficial to bring in a third-party to help solidify taxes for your practice. Still, having a dental accountant on staff who truly understands tax law can be worth its weight in gold. It’s something that many practices overlook, but given the high costs that can be incurred from running a dentist’s office, there’s a huge amount of potential for write-offs to be tracked and credited. The trick? Working with someone who is able to identify how taxes might affect your financials and make the most out of the situation.
It takes a lot to be a great dental accountant, but experience can play a key role in finding the success you’re looking for. With a little bit of work, you can take your practice to new heights. Strive to hit these benchmarks, and success will naturally come your way.
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