Gain without Pain: Using QuickBooks to Manage Healthcare
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Gain without Pain: Using QuickBooks to Manage Healthcare file:///G|/Resume%20and%20such/Writing%20Samples/Article%20with%20Scott.htm[5/5/2009 11:52:47 AM] Community Order Status View Cart To Order, Call Sales (888) 236-9501 Practice Resources Events Schedule & Downloads Intuit ProConnection Current Newsletter Enroll Subscriber Center Archive FAQs Resources Troubleshooting Articles Accounting Technology Practice Development Tax Payroll Test Drives & Collateral Product Tips Request a Speaker/Trainer Financial Calculators Affiliate Program Intuit ProConnection Really Simple You can bring these articles to your desktop as soon as they are published. Sign up for RSS nowSign up for RSS now Already a ProConnection subscriber? Update your profile and personalize your ProConnection experience. Update your profile Not a subscriber yet? Sign up now for free and start receiving customized newsletters directly to your inbox. Sign up now Accounting Articles Gain without Pain: Using QuickBooks to Manage Healthcare By: Scott Cytron, ABC, and Kelly Kleinsteuber Today's healthcare solutions depend on an expanding group of professionals coming together to offer preventive medicine to the healthy and treat the unwell. Whether the practice is rooted in traditional medicine, dental and orthodontia, emergency services, or even cosmetic surgery, medical professionals must do everything they can to make their back offices more efficient. However, at the end of the day, the focus is usually on the patient - not the finances. Even if a practice is large enough to have an administrator or office manager, this person cannot know all the accounting-related nuances associated with running a smoothly functioning office. Scott Cytron and Kelly Kleinsteuber recently spoke with Helen Zucker, an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor who helps medical professionals make the most of QuickBooks to manage their businesses. A Change of Careers How does a person go from obtaining a bachelor's degree in Human Development to becoming a QuickBooks Advanced ProAdvisor? Chalk it up to an aptitude for numbers and a desire to work with people. Helen Zucker didn't know she would end up in this capacity when she initially learned QuickBooks. At the time, she worked in an administrative position and knew she had to learn the program in order to keep up with the bookkeeping tasks. When a few friends who served as independent contractors with other businesses learned about her new QuickBooks' skills, they quickly enlisted her to balance their own books. Helen got more than she bargained for; one friend's account was $9,000 off. "I worked at the books until it made sense again - and I was hooked on the numbers," she says. "During this time, while I was doing other small bookkeeping jobs and taking some advanced accounting classes, Robin Wilson of Business Cents asked me to do bookkeeping work for her clients." That was five years ago and Helen has never looked back. Today, she is a full-time consultant at the San Anselmo-Calif. firm, working with small- and medium-size companies, many of which are healthcare entities. Applying it to Medical Offices Through the firm's "business systems consulting" practice, Helen works with clients to analyze their company's accounting processes, not only to streamline business procedures, but to find other industry-specific software packages to integrate with QuickBooks and other bookkeeping tasks. Often, this analysis leads her back to QuickBooks as an attractive solution to her clients in the medical industry because the software can be integrated with other programs. "You can download banking from insurance companies and billing services directly into the register to allow for up- to-the-minute cash flow," she says. "QuickBooks also makes it possible to track income by source type and then use month-end reports to journal entry the income to either the physician or other type of practitioner." Based on the program's flexibility, Helen is continuously able to customize QuickBooks to a particular client. The Chart of Accounts includes traditional fixed asset, liability, equity, income and expense categories with accounts she creates just for a particular office. This includes, for example, lab fees, licenses and fees, medical supplies, patient refunds, transcription services and several other medically oriented areas. Helen finds that one of the most useful attributes of QuickBooks for medical offices is the ability to track income and expense by practitioner. This makes it simple for her to run a Profit and Loss by class to see not only an office's bottom line, but also if someone is not billing. "We discovered one practitioner's income had gone down even though he was not working less. As a result, we were able to track down what income had not yet gone through the billing service and ensure that the missing income was recouped."
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Helen Zucker is an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor who helps medical professionals make the most of QuickBooks to manage their businesses. This is an article I co-wrote with Scott Cytron during my internship at Pierpont Communications in Dallas, Texas.
Transcript of Gain without Pain: Using QuickBooks to Manage Healthcare
Gain without Pain: Using QuickBooks to Manage Healthcare
file:///G|/Resume%20and%20such/Writing%20Samples/Article%20with%20Scott.htm[5/5/2009 11:52:47 AM]
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Accounting ArticlesGain without Pain: Using QuickBooks to Manage Healthcare
By: Scott Cytron, ABC, and Kelly Kleinsteuber
Today's healthcare solutions depend on an expanding group ofprofessionals coming together to offer preventive medicine tothe healthy and treat the unwell. Whether the practice isrooted in traditional medicine, dental and orthodontia,emergency services, or even cosmetic surgery, medicalprofessionals must do everything they can to make their backoffices more efficient.
However, at the end of the day, the focus is usually on thepatient - not the finances. Even if a practice is large enough to
have an administrator or office manager, this person cannot know all theaccounting-related nuances associated with running a smoothly functioningoffice.
Scott Cytron and Kelly Kleinsteuber recently spoke with Helen Zucker, anAdvanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor who helps medical professionals make the most of QuickBooks to manage theirbusinesses.
A Change of Careers
How does a person go from obtaining a bachelor's degree in Human Development to becoming a QuickBooks Advanced ProAdvisor?Chalk it up to an aptitude for numbers and a desire to work with people.
Helen Zucker didn't know she would end up in this capacity when she initially learned QuickBooks. At the time, she worked in anadministrative position and knew she had to learn the program in order to keep up with the bookkeeping tasks. When a few friendswho served as independent contractors with other businesses learned about her new QuickBooks' skills, they quickly enlisted her tobalance their own books. Helen got more than she bargained for; one friend's account was $9,000 off.
"I worked at the books until it made sense again - and I was hooked on the numbers," she says. "During this time, while I wasdoing other small bookkeeping jobs and taking some advanced accounting classes, Robin Wilson of Business Cents asked me todo bookkeeping work for her clients."
That was five years ago and Helen has never looked back. Today, she is a full-time consultant at the San Anselmo-Calif. firm,working with small- and medium-size companies, many of which are healthcare entities.
Applying it to Medical Offices
Through the firm's "business systems consulting" practice, Helen works with clients to analyze their company'saccounting processes, not only to streamline business procedures, but to find other industry-specific softwarepackages to integrate with QuickBooks and other bookkeeping tasks.
Often, this analysis leads her back to QuickBooks as an attractive solution to her clients in the medical industrybecause the software can be integrated with other programs.
"You can download banking from insurance companies and billing services directly into the register to allow for up-to-the-minute cash flow," she says. "QuickBooks also makes it possible to track income by source type and thenuse month-end reports to journal entry the income to either the physician or other type of practitioner."
Based on the program's flexibility, Helen is continuously able to customize QuickBooks to a particular client. The Chart of Accountsincludes traditional fixed asset, liability, equity, income and expense categories with accounts she creates just for a particular office.This includes, for example, lab fees, licenses and fees, medical supplies, patient refunds, transcription services and several othermedically oriented areas.
Helen finds that one of the most useful attributes of QuickBooks for medical offices is the ability to track income and expense bypractitioner. This makes it simple for her to run a Profit and Loss by class to see not only an office's bottom line, but also ifsomeone is not billing.
"We discovered one practitioner's income had gone down even though he was not working less. As a result, we were able to trackdown what income had not yet gone through the billing service and ensure that the missing income was recouped."
Gain without Pain: Using QuickBooks to Manage Healthcare
file:///G|/Resume%20and%20such/Writing%20Samples/Article%20with%20Scott.htm[5/5/2009 11:52:47 AM]
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Helen says her clients appreciate the deep reservoirs of knowledge available to them as provided by the firm's eight employees.Around 95 percent of the firm's clients use Intuit software, including QuickBooks Premier, Professional and Point of Sale. BusinessCents, in fact, is Intuit's San Francisco Bay Area RSP (Retail Solutions Provider) with local experts specializing in QuickBooks Pointof Sale.
Records Construction
One of the specialty services offered by the firm is Records Construction. Helen says a client in this situation is under a great dealof financial and emotional duress. The solution, then, is what numbers people do best: analyze the situation for the greatestefficiency.
"The most important element to ask a client is, 'What is the minimum required in the records construction process to organize theinformation and provide results?' Some clients need a customized solution, while others just need a quick fix."
QuickBooks, Quicken and other accounting packages automate the data. Helen even resorts, in some instances, to Microsoft Exceland court-required formats when needed. The final step is to provide the required financial reports.
"Our clients' paperwork is often unorganized, so we work to define the goals and scope of the project, then review the raw data,whether in electronic form, a filing cabinet or shoeboxes," she says. "We then sort the documentation to help fill in the missingpieces and organize the data into a usable format."
The bottom line for Helen is to help clients through a successful accounting practice that is more proactive than reactive -anticipating client needs and designing profitable solutions.
"Our clients value the ownership we take in our work and the way we want to help their businesses be as successful as possible."
Scott H. Cytron, ABC, is a frequent contributor to industry publications covering professional services industries, includingaccounting, healthcare, financial planning, collections and debt, and high-tech. A senior vice president at Pierpont Communications ,Inc., in Dallas, he can be reached at [email protected]
Last Updated: 09/25/2008
