The main purpose of collection letters is to help your patients pay off their account balances — and to increase your profits, as well. Timely and consistent reminders to your guarantors can help you accomplish these goals. With Dentrix and Microsoft Word, you can automatically merge your patient’s information into pre-configured collection letters.
Watch the following video to learn how to create collection letters from a template. (Duration 1:10)
Additional Tips
- Dentrix comes with pre-configured, customizable letter templates for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd notices for overdue balances.
- Dentrix will automatically merge your patient information into the letters based on various ranges, parameters, and filters that you define in the Letter or Custom List Setup dialog box.
- The pre-configured letters are typically patient notices within a date range of when the last payments have been made. To set a date range from the Collection Letters & Custom Lists dialog box, click the Last Pay Date search button and specify the beginning and ending dates for the range; however, you can leave any date field blank to set an open-ended range.
- You may need to close Microsoft Word before creating collection letters, as having Word open might cause your letter creation to fail. In addition, certain Word add-ins (plug-ins) might cause your letter creation to fail; if so, remove or disable the add-in that is causing the problem.
- By clicking their respective buttons in the Collection Letters & Custom Lists dialog box, you can also display the patient’s data (without generating letters) in Microsoft Notepad, Microsoft Excel, or the Dentrix List Manager.
- To add a note to your guarantor’s journals indicating a letter was created, select Add to Journal when creating letters.
- To learn more about setting up merge data in the Letter or Custom List Setup dialog box, read Setting Up Merge Data in Dentrix Help.
- To learn more about creating collection letters from a template, read Creating Letters and Creating Letters Using the List Manager in Dentrix Help.
Check Your Knowledge
If you have access to Dentrix, check your knowledge with this exercise.
- Switch to the Dentrix demo database.
(Skip this step if you are using the Dentrix Learning Edition software.) - Dean Little owes for services rendered to his family in 2017. Create a collection letter for him with the following parameters (leave all other settings as they are):
- Patient Name: Dean Little
- Guarantor Only
- Balance Aging: <-90+
- Balance: zero
- Last Pay Date: none