There might be a difference if you are comparing your takings reports and your income reports for the same time period.

The Takings Report shows you all of the payments recorded in Dentally for the date period.

The Takings Report will show you part-payments, instalments, deposits - any monies coming in to your Practice.

The Income Report, for the same date period, shows cleared invoices in that period and will show the full amount cleared with the intention of showing Income which can be paid to associate fee earners for example.

For example, Mrs Smith has an invoice for £200.00 raised on 27 October 2020.

She pays £100 on 27 October 2019

She pays £80 on 4 November 2019

She pays £20 on 4 December 2019. Her balance is now £0

The Takings Report for 1 - 31 October will show the £100.

The Takings Report for 1 - 30 November will show the £80.

The Takings Report for 1 - 31 December will show the £20.

The Income Report for October and November will not show these takings.

The Income Report for any dates ON or AFTER 4th December will show the Income of £200 because it has now been paid in full.

If you have invoices for large sums, and your patient is paying off the invoice in instalments, the total sum of the invoice will not show in the Income Report until the total amount is paid. Therefore, if you pay associates on fully paid invoices, there may be a substantial delay between them completing the treatment, and them receiving their payment. There is a way around this.

You could invoice for the treatment in increments. For example, you could break the total treatment into 4 or so treatments. Each treatment could be completed and charged and paid. The invoice would be fully paid and the associate could be paid for that work.

An example

An Invisalign treatment which costs £3,500 could be broken into 5 staged treatments Invisalign1, Invisalign2 etc, each of £700.

The patient attends. The Practitioner charts the first stage - Invisalign1 - and completes and charges that £700 which the patient pays.

The Income Report will show £700 against that Practitioner.

If you use the Income Report to pay the practitioner, this will allow them payment for the work that has been completed.

This pattern repeats until the patient has completed all the stages of the treatment.

To learn more about the Income Report and how you might use it, we have a number of tutorial web pages for you to refer to.