--- title: 7 Red Flags Your Bookkeeper Is Not Really Dental-Specific description: Plenty of bookkeepers list dentistry as a specialty. Seven signs yours is a general bookkeeper with a dental client or two. image: https://reciprocityaccounting.com/hubfs/blog-images/post_235.png --- [Skip to content](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-bookkeeper-red-flags#main-content) [![](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/hs-fs/hubfs/logo-horizontal-transparent.png?width=1298&height=290&name=logo-horizontal-transparent.png)Homepage](https://reciprocityaccounting.com) - [Services](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/services) - [Pricing](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/pricing) - [FAQ](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/faq) - [Blog](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog) - [About](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/about) [Book a Discovery Call](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/contact) - [Services](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/services) - [Pricing](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/pricing) - [FAQ](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/faq) - [Blog](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog) - [About](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/about) [Book a Discovery Call](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/contact) ![Reciprocity Accounting card: Is Your Bookkeeper Really Dental?, a Problems post.](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/hs-fs/hubfs/blog-images/post_235.png?width=1200&height=630&name=post_235.png) Problems # 7 Red Flags Your Bookkeeper Is Not Really Dental-Specific ![Greg Hudnall](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/49dbd5c12b604f92786349ba17b92e2c) Greg Hudnall October 29, 2026 Problems  ·  6 min read "Dental-specific" is a claim anyone can put on a website. Your own books show whether it is true, and each flag below comes with a test you can run in a few minutes. [Plenty of bookkeepers list dentistry as a specialty](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-specific-bookkeeping). Some mean it. Others have a dental client or two and run them the way they run every other client. You do not need to audit your bookkeeper to tell the difference, because it shows up in the books themselves. Most of the flags below come from one root problem: books kept from the bank statement instead of from your practice software. ## Red Flag 1: Deposits Booked as Collections Open your profit and loss statement and look at the top line. If it is a single line that equals what hit the bank, your books are recording deposits. What looks like collections is really whatever hit the bank. Not every deposit is a collection. A loan, a transfer from savings or an owner contribution can all land in the operating account, and IRS [Publication 334](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p334) states that "money borrowed through a bona fide loan is not income." IRS [Publication 583](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p583) tells businesses to note the source of each deposit, whether business income, personal funds or loans. A single day's collections also often arrive as several deposits from different processors on different days, so deposits do not line up with the month the work was produced. And if your card processor deposits net of its fees, booking the deposit as collections understates both your collections and your processing cost. **The test:** ask your bookkeeper to show you how last month's deposits break down into patient payments, insurance payments and everything else. A dental bookkeeper can answer that the same day, because the breakdown is already in the tie-out. ## Red Flag 2: No Production vs Collections Tie-Out Your practice management system records what you produced and what you collected. Your bank records what arrived. A dental bookkeeper ties the three together every month and explains the difference. The difference is rarely zero. Even two reports inside one system can disagree: Open Dental's [manual](https://www.opendental.com/manual/reportprodinc.html) notes that "production and income amounts may not match Aging of A/R amounts." Add the bank and there are more differences to explain. Someone has to work through them every month, so that a missing insurance check or a deposit that never reached the bank shows up within weeks. Our post on [production versus collections](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/production-vs-collections-dental-practice) covers what the gap between them tells you. **The test:** ask for last month's tie-out. You want to see collections in your practice software, deposits in the bank, and a short list of reconciling items. A bank reconciliation alone is a smaller job. ## Red Flag 3: Write-Offs Lumped Together A PPO write-off and patient bad debt are different things. A contractual write-off is the part of your fee your insurance contract says you cannot collect. Bad debt is money a patient owed and never paid. Put them in one account and your net production is wrong, and so is every ratio built on it. Our post on [write-offs versus bad debt](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-insurance-write-offs-vs-bad-debt) walks through the distinction. There is a tax issue too. If the practice files on the cash method, IRS Publication 334 says you "can't take a bad debt deduction for amounts owed to you that you have not received and can't collect if you never included those amounts in income." A bookkeeper who books uncollected patient balances as a bad debt expense on cash-basis books is deducting money that was never collected or reported. **The test:** look for the words "write-offs" or "bad debt" on your P&L. If there is one line for both, or neither appears at all, ask where they are. ## Red Flag 4: No Fixed Close Date Ask your bookkeeper what date last month's books were closed, and the two months before that. If there is no fixed date, that is the flag. If you see a collections dip on the 10th, the claims are recent enough to chase. Six weeks later, they are harder to recover. We explain [why the books should close by the 10th](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-books-monthly-close-deadline) of the following month in a separate post. **The test:** check the dates on the last three monthly packages you received. ## Red Flag 5: No Dental Benchmarks, or Benchmarks for Everything A dental bookkeeper reads your costs against dental ranges, measured as a percentage of net production. A healthy practice collects 98% to 100% of net production. Clinical supplies and lab each run 5% to 7%. Staff payroll runs 25% to 30%. Total overhead runs 55% to 65%. Use them as a guide. Our free [Dental Practice Benchmark Scorecard](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/benchmark-scorecard) lets you check your own numbers against them. The reverse is also a flag. Some numbers have no credible national range because they are driven by something other than the dentistry: rent by your building and market, marketing by how mature your practice is, owner pay by your entity and pay election. A bookkeeper who puts a national benchmark on every line, rent and marketing included, is quoting ranges with no published basis. **The test:** ask what base your percentages are measured against. A dental bookkeeper answers right away, net production or collections, and uses the same base every month. We use net production; at a healthy collection rate the ranges hold either way. Then ask what the national benchmark for rent is. There is no national one. ## Red Flag 6: They Never Ask About Your Practice Software A bookkeeper who has never asked which practice management system you use, or which reports they need from it, is probably not using it. A dental bookkeeper asks more than the name. In Open Dental, for example, an office chooses how PPO write-offs appear in the Production and Income report. The manual lists three options: "Using insurance payment date," "Using procedure date," and "Use initial claim date for write-off estimates, ins pay date for write-off adjustments." Each one moves write-offs between months, which changes what last month's net production means. Someone who has done this work asks which setting your office uses before reading a report. Our comparison of [Open Dental, Dentrix and Eaglesoft](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/open-dental-vs-dentrix-vs-eaglesoft-bookkeeping) covers what each system means for your books. **The test:** ask your bookkeeper which reports they pull from your system each month, by name. ## Red Flag 7: You Cannot Read the Reports If you cannot read your monthly package, the package is usually the problem. A dental package should answer dental questions. Did we collect what we produced? Did lab or supplies move, and which one? How much did PPO write-offs cost us this month? Is anything aging past 90 days? **The test:** give yourself five minutes with last month's package and try to find your collection rate against net production, lab and supplies as separate percentages, and the biggest change from the month before. If you cannot find them, the reports were not built for a dental practice. ## What to Do If You See These Raise it with your bookkeeper first. Some of these are fixable inside the current relationship: a chart of accounts can be restructured, write-offs can be split out, a close date can be put in writing. Our post on [the most common dental bookkeeping mistakes](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-practice-bookkeeping-mistakes) covers the structural fixes. Others are not. A bookkeeper who has never opened your practice software, does not work from a consistent dental base and has no close date is doing general bookkeeping, and that is not usually something one conversation fixes. That can be fine for a very new practice that only needs a clean file for its tax return. For an established practice making decisions on its numbers, it costs you in missed collections and wrong decisions. If you are weighing a change, our list of [12 questions to ask before you hire](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/how-to-choose-dental-bookkeeper) is the place to start. *P.S.* [*Reciprocity Accounting*](https://reciprocityaccounting.com) *ties your practice management system to your bank every month, so you can run every one of these tests on us.* [*See how we can help your practice.*](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/contact) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How can I tell if my bookkeeper is really dental-specific? Look at your own books. A dental bookkeeper ties production and collections in your practice software to your deposits every month, keeps PPO write-offs separate from bad debt, measures costs against a consistent dental base, and closes on a fixed date. ### What is the biggest red flag in dental bookkeeping? Deposits booked as collections, with no tie-out to your practice management system. Loans, transfers and processor fees end up mixed into what looks like collections. ### Should PPO write-offs and bad debt be in the same account? No. A contractual write-off is the part of your fee your insurance contract does not let you collect. Bad debt is money a patient owed and did not pay. Mixing them makes your net production and collection rate wrong. ### Should my bookkeeper give me a benchmark for rent and marketing? No. Rent, marketing and owner pay depend on your building, your market and your entity, so no credible national range exists. Track them against your own history. ### What should I do if my bookkeeper shows several red flags? Raise them directly first, since some are structural fixes. If the bookkeeper has never worked in your practice software and has no close date, it is worth comparing alternatives. **Related reading:** - [What Does a Dental Bookkeeper Actually Do?](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/bookkeeping-for-dentists) - [5 Signs Your Dental Practice Needs Better Financial Reporting](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-practice-financial-reporting) - [How Dental Practices Should Handle Insurance Write-Offs in Their Books](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-insurance-write-offs-bookkeeping) ## Share this post [mailto:https%3A%2F%2Freciprocityaccounting.com%2Fblog%2Fdental-bookkeeper-red-flags](mailto:https%3A%2F%2Freciprocityaccounting.com%2Fblog%2Fdental-bookkeeper-red-flags) ## Keep reading ### [![Reciprocity Accounting card: Does Your Bookkeeper Need a BAA?, a How To post.](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/hs-fs/hubfs/blog-images/post_238.png?width=1200&height=630&name=post_238.png) How To Does Your Dental Bookkeeper Need a BAA? HIPAA Questions](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-bookkeeper-hipaa-baa) ### [![Reciprocity Accounting card: Flat Fee, Hourly, or % of Collections, a Cost post.](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/hs-fs/hubfs/blog-images/post_234.png?width=1200&height=630&name=post_234.png) Cost Dental Bookkeeping Pricing: Flat, Hourly, % of Collections](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/blog/dental-bookkeeping-pricing-models) | ![Reciprocity Accounting](https://reciprocityaccounting.com/hubfs/logo_horizontal_dark_transparent.png) Accounting built for dental practices. Books closed by the 10th. **Guaranteed**. 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Our services are bookkeeping, financial reporting, and business advisory in nature. 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