Accountants and Bookkeepers Are Not Insurance Against Embezzlement

Why is that?  After all they are probably closer to your numbers than anyone in the dental practice business line-up.  The truth is, according to experts in the field of dental office embezzlement at the ADA, external accountants found only 9% of the reported embezzlement taken place in dental practices.

 

This is not a criticism of accountants or bookkeepers it is simply a fact that their relationship is with the numbers from the practice that you give them or they take your raw information and produce the profit and loss statements. They are not familiar with the dental offices manner of receipt and posting of revenue. The CPA will do an audit which has a primary focus of establishing your financial statement integrity and not embezzlement.  If there isn’t enough revenue to cover your costs of doing business, then a red flag will certainly go up but that usually isn’t what happens when there are calculated embezzlement practices at work in your business.
With new technology comes new and innovative ways to solve the management of the dental receipts in your practice.  Practice consultants teach that you must have a break in the chain of who handles the money in your practice.  In other words, the person that takes the money from the patient should not be the one who deposits that money in the bank.  Or the person who handles the accounts receivables should not be the one who performs the accounts payables.   Technology today can securely allow a posting/insurance specialist to remotely access your patient accounts, post and balance and send you a report without touching the money and without having access to your private banking information. At eAssist we have the technology to take your practice to a higher level of accountability.

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