Key ABELDent Features That Will Please Both Your Administrative Team and Your Patients

September is Office Manager Appreciation Month, which is a perfect time to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of the office administrators, receptionists, and the front-desk team members in your practice. In the fast-paced environment your dental practice operates in, equipping your team members with top-quality software and access to various useful features helps to ensure that your team finishes tasks with ease. Additionally, full-featured software benefits both your team and your patients, helping everyone have a positive experience.

This month, we want to share some key features you can find in ABELDent Version 15 to assist your administrative team with completing tasks faster and with ease. ABELDent Version 15, synonymous with ABELDent Cloud and Local Plus, is the latest full-featured version of our dental software. If your practice is using an older version of ABELDent, you may find several of these features are greatly improved or entirely new in comparison with the version you use in your practice.

Key Features that Benefit Your Administrative Team (and Your Patients!)

The Receivables Manager – Advanced Accounts Receivable (A/R) Tracking

The Receivables Manager helps you stay on top of outstanding patient amounts. All outstanding payments are listed on the Receivables Manager, but ABELDent lets your team filter and sort through the list of your patients’ outstanding balances in a few different ways:

Filters in the Receivables Manager:

Screenshot of ABELDent's Receivables Manager. Text overlaid screenshot reads: "here is an example of filtering via provider. You can select multiple providers if needed." A yellow arrow points to the highlighted filtering options.

By Provider
By Insurance Carrier
By Aged Amounts (30+ days, 60+ days, or 90+ days)

Sorting Options in the Receivables Manager:

Screenshot of ABELDent's Receivables Manager. Text overlaid screenshot reads: "The filters you applied to the search display here". A yellow arrow points to the highlighted filters displaying on the screen.

Numerically – by Account Holder patient ID number
Alphabetically – by Account Holder name
By amount owing (high to low or low to high) under the “Total Receivables” and “Est. Pat. Owes” columns
You can search for specific patients by name (both first and last)

In addition to the convenient filters and sorting options, the Patient Sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen ensures that you have instant access to patient contact information. This means you can contact patients about outstanding amounts without having to navigate away from the Receivables Manager, helping prevent disrupted workflows.

The Receivables Manager also comes equipped with the Aged A/R Totals Tab for your team to easily export aged balances for your accountant. You can export the data into many formats, including PDF documents, Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets (CSVs) and Word Documents (DOC), and more. The data can also, of course, be printed as needed.

A screenshot of the Aged A/R Totals Tab in ABELDent dental software. Text overlaid reads: "here is what the Aged A/R Totals Tab looks like"

Improved interface on the Financial Tab

Insurance expected amounts are visually displayed via pie charts and can be hovered over to display more detailed information, including both primary/secondary (or more) insurance amounts.
Insurance expected amounts are editable as needed so your team can see the correct expected amount and collect accurate pre-payments from patients while they are still physically in your office.
In addition to the above, ABELDent will automatically update the amount expected from insurance when an EOB record is returned through CDANet. This provides you with an accurate record of the patient portion of a charge for service without any manual effort.
If you are using an older version of ABELDent, you will notice in ABELDent v15 that there are no longer separate columns for Insurance Balances and Patient Balances. Instead, there are only two columns for Charges and Payments. You can still see expected Insurance amounts via the pie chart icons mentioned above. The new interface in ABELDent v15 improves the readability of the patient’s financial tab, conveying the same amount of crucial information without appearing overwhelming or crowded.

Appointment Request Tracking (ART) and the Short Notice List for filling last-minute gaps in your schedule

The Appointment Request Tracker (ART) feature, also part of previous versions of ABELDent, allows you to add patients to a short-notice list to let them know when last-minute openings arise and allows them to come in sooner for treatment. The Appointment Request Tracker allows you to choose which day(s) and time(s) work best for the patient. All the options in the Appointment Request Tracker are customizable to your practice and can be edited as needed.

Short Notice Messaging

Part of the Appointment Request Tracker feature also coincides with Short Notice Messaging. This feature allows you to send text messages to all patients with pending treatment when an opening occurs on your schedule. The first patient that responds to your message can be scheduled to fill the gap. This feature also benefits patients in various situations, such as a patient who had to cancel their appointment but wants to come in as soon as possible for their treatment.

This feature requires ABELDent Patient Communication System (PCS). ABELDent PCS is built into ABELDent v15 and provides users with a comprehensive list of simplified patient communication features, which we will cover in detail in the following section.

Simplified Patient Communication with ABELDent PCS

Automate Appointment Confirmation/Reminders

A growing number of patients prefer texting or email reminders/confirmations, and due to the ever-rising prevalence of spam calls/scammers and Caller ID spoofing, many patients do not answer the phone and simply wait for the caller to leave a voicemail. Using Automated Appointment Confirmation/Reminders in ABELDent, your team can minimize the number of outgoing phone calls and limit them to specific patients who prefer verbal communication.
Limit the number of outgoing phone calls made to patients (save time and limit phone calls to those that prefer them) and ensure your practice has the option to contact patients using their preferred method – being able to select their preferred contact method and use phone calls, texting, and emails to ensure patients see your messages and confirm/attend their appointments.

Broadcast Messaging

Allows you to make announcements to your entire patient base (for patients who have consented to receive these messages) quickly and easily. Ideal for:
A change in hours or holiday hours
Inclement weather/unexpected office closures
Staff change announcements – e.g. welcoming a new team member or announcing the retirement of a team member.
Holiday greetings and reminders to patients to book treatment before the year-end.

Two-Way Texting

Quick, efficient and hassle-free real-time messaging with patients. This feature can be significantly helpful for your administrative team when they need to reach a patient quickly for whatever reason. Similarly, this feature hugely benefits the growing number of patients who prefer text-based communication over phone calls and/or emails.

New Patient Self-Booking

This feature allows new/prospective patients to easily find your practice online and schedule an appointment with your office with less traditional barriers (e.g. calling, leaving a potential voicemail/prompting telephone tag, forgetting appointment if it’s booked verbally without a patient file, etc.)

Create and send customized online forms

New Patient Intake forms, Insurance detail forms, Health History forms, and more. You can create as many forms as your practice needs and easily send them to patients via email.

A graphic with an abstract blue background. White overlaid text reads: How ABELDent's Custom Online Forms Work: The email contains a button that links to a secure webpage, ensuring patient responses are encrypted and their PHI (protected health information) is safe. The online form is easily submitted back to your practice via the patient clicking a simple button." An image of the submit button appears here. The text continues to read: "Once the forms are submitted to your practice, the responses are inserted into their patient file. You can review/sign off on returned patient forms or reject them if there is an issue with any of the responses.

Once a form is submitted to your practice, the patient’s response is inserted into their patient record. This eliminates the need to insert data into patient records manually, minimizing potential entry problems such as typing mistakes or illegible handwriting. Your team can review/sign off on returned patient forms in a matter of seconds.

Many of the features listed above prevent repetitive drudgework that traditionally takes up a lot of time (e.g. making phone calls to patients or going through lists of reports to find patients with outstanding treatment/balances owing). Additionally, many of these features benefit your patients directly, such as New Patient Self-Booking or Online Payments, by removing as many barriers as possible. Some of these barriers include procrastination, having to call in with credit card information or visit your office to make a payment, telephone tag, and other roadblocks. With the streamlined administrative features included in ABELDent v15, your team can accomplish tasks with much greater efficiency and far less frustration.

As mentioned, the features highlighted in this blog post are all part of ABELDent Version 15. If your practice is currently using an older version of ABELDent and you are interested in updating to v15, please consider our Guided Update Services. More information is available here. There are many more time-saving and work-enhancing administrative functions built into ABELDent Version 15 that are not mentioned in this blog post. To learn more about our other features, check out our Video Library to learn more about our other features, or watch our overview of ABELDent video here.

If you are using another dental software and are interested in switching over to ABELDent, please contact our team here. Our team is available 24/7 to help you get the most out of your dental software.