The Reports and Tasks Scheduler allows you to schedule many different tasks (and reports) which are commonly associated with daily, monthly, or yearly routines. But it also allows you the flexibility to create queues and run tasks at different time intervals, as you choose. For example, you can schedule the Aging Report to automatically run every month — without having to remember to do it. Ultimately, the Reports and Tasks Scheduler is designed to automate recurring tasks and improve office efficiency.
Watch the following video to learn how to schedule monthly reports and tasks. (Duration 1:25)
Additional Tips
- Dentrix recommends that the following tasks be run monthly:
- Move your transactions into history and age your patient account balances.
- Lock clinical notes from the previous month by moving them into history.
- Reset insurance benefits for plans that renew in the current month.
- Scheduled tasks will automatically run according to the assigned queue’s date and time parameters.
- By right-clicking an Available Task, you can perform any of the following functions:
- Run Now – Immediately runs the task or report. You will be prompted to choose the settings for this one-time execution.
- Add to Queue – Makes the task a “scheduled task,” by assigning it to a queue.
- By right-clicking a Scheduled Task, you can perform any of the following functions:
- Run Now – Immediately runs the task or report using the scheduled task’s settings.
- Run Once – The task will run only once, according to the scheduled queue’s setting. Then it will be deleted from the queue.
- Suspend Task / Resume Task – A task can be “suspended” and “resumed”. A suspended task will no longer run on its assigned schedule, but the Scheduler retains the task’s settings and place within the queue so it can be resumed at a later time. (Compare to Delete.)
- Edit – Makes changes to the scheduled task’s settings.
- Delete – Completely removes a scheduled task and its settings from a queue. (Compare to Suspend Task / Resume Task.)
- If your office used the Month End Wizard in previous versions of Dentrix, an additional Scheduled Tasks queue, titled “Month End Wizard,” was automatically created in the Scheduled Task pane. It includes all the tasks (with their settings) that you established with the Wizard; however, the tasks are suspended and must be resumed if you wish to use them.
- The Reports and Tasks Scheduler comes with pre-installed tasks in Daily, Monthly, and Yearly queues. By default, all tasks are suspended.
- Your practice’s server computer must be running for all scheduled tasks to process on schedule.
- To learn more about scheduling monthly reports and tasks, read from Dentrix Help the topics in the Reports and Tasks Scheduler Overview, and read Creating Reports and Tasks Scheduler Queues and Running Month End.
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.) - Create a new Scheduled Tasks queue titled “Billing Statements A to M.” Set it to recur monthly on the first Monday of every month. Add the Billing Statements task to the new queue. Set the task options to only include patients with the last name beginning with letters A to M. (For help setting the billing statement filters, review the Generating Billing Statements lesson topic.)
- Create a second new queue titled “Billing Statements N to Z,” and set it to recur monthly on the third Monday of every month. Add the Billing Statements task to the new queue. Set the task options to only include patients with the last name beginning with N to Z.
- Remove the Billing Statements task from all other existing queues.