Get more cash flow: 3 signs your dental practice needs an A/R clean up

Every business wants more cash flow, and dental businesses are no exception. This is especially true when dental practices struggle to collect efficiently from dental patients and dental insurance providers. The tough part? When dental business owners don’t know when collections aren’t at their full potential.

Is your dental practice working harder than ever but still struggling with cash flow?

Rising lab costs, increased competition for staff, and economic uncertainty have many practices monitoring expenses more closely than ever before. Yet, one of the most overlooked sources of lost revenue is sitting in plain sight: your aging accounts receivable.

The next boost to your bottom line could come from an accounts receivable (A/R) clean-up. Luckily, DCS offers a service specifically designed to do exactly that—retrieve your outstanding revenue and improve your collection processes so you can collect more in the future. 

And if you’re one of the many dentists and dental business owners who aren’t even aware they’re missing revenue—don’t worry. We’ve made it easier to identify your need for an A/R clean-up with these 3 clear signs. 

Key takeaways when determining if your dental business needs an A/R clean up: 

• Aging A/R is silently draining your revenue.
• Your team’s time is better spent on proactive revenue generation, not chasing old balances.
• An A/R clean-up is a high-impact way to improve cash flow and financial clarity.

Sign #1: Your list of 60+ day dental insurance claims keeps growing

Insurance claims that sit unpaid for 60 days or more are a red flag—and they can be surprisingly costly. Whether your team is spending extra time pursuing payment, or you’re writing it off due to nonpayment, every unpaid claim negatively impacts your bottom line.

Every day a claim ages (that is, remains unpaid), it becomes less likely to be paid in full, or at all. If your list of aging claims is growing instead of shrinking, your practice is starting to bleed revenue behind the scenes.

Not only is money left on the table, but unresolved claims also create extra work for your team. Reprocessing old claims, tracking down documentation, and following up with dental insurance steal time and energy away from everything else in your office—especially patient care. 

In the worst-case scenario, these claims become unrecoverable when they exceed timely filing limits or are denied on appeal because they aren’t handled with expertise.

As we’ll explain, these delays don’t just slow down your income—they can derail your financial stability altogether.

Sign #2: Your team spends hours every week (or every day) chasing unpaid dental patient balances

Your staff is likely doing their best to follow up on outstanding patient balances and unpaid claims, but how much time is it taking them—and costing you?

Manual follow-ups (by phone, email, or even snail mail) eat up valuable hours—or even days—while your team sits on hold or waits for a reply.

Whenever your front desk team spends more time tracking down payments than helping patients or scheduling treatment, you’re missing opportunities to proactively grow revenue, such as increasing your average production per patient.

Related: 4 ways to get dental patients to pay their balance soon after treatment

Plus, the patient experience will surely suffer. Inattentive or distracted staff—and inaccurate and repeated balance reminders—can lead to frustration, reduce treatment acceptance, or cause patients to leave your practice altogether.

These issues add up to a steep price to pay for not collecting revenue you’ve already earned.

Sign #3: You can’t trust your dental A/R reports or your decisions that are based on them

If you’ve ever looked at your A/R report and thought, “That can’t be right,” you’re not alone—and you might be correct.

High A/R reports aren’t always due to unpaid claims. They can result from inconsistent write-offs, inaccurate adjustments, or unresolved insurance issues. Over time, this clutters your practice management software with inaccurate data, which produces misleading reports.

Sometimes, the problem stems from deeper collections issues, like duplicate accounts, unposted payments, or an accumulation of uncollected small balances.

When you don’t have accurate, up-to-date information, it’s difficult to forecast revenue or assess performance. Your financial data should contribute to confident, effective decision-making—but outdated A/R reports can lead to second-guessing and expensive mistakes.

How a dental A/R clean-up fixes all 3 problems

Whether your claims are backed up, your team is overwhelmed, or your reports are unreliable, an A/R clean-up is a smart and actionable fix.

DCS A/R Special Projects services are built to give your practice the financial fresh start it needs, including:

• Rapid recovery of overlooked insurance claims and unpaid patient balances
• Expert follow-up by seasoned billing professionals who know how to escalate and resolve aged claims fast
• Accurate, trustworthy data so you can confidently manage cash flow and plan your financial strategy
• Hands-off process—we handle the heavy lifting, so your team can focus on patient care
• Peace of mind knowing that your books are up-to-date, and revenue isn’t slipping through the cracks

Read more: Sky-high Dental A/R? Here's how to boost dental insurance collections

DCS Head of Special Projects, Jeff Smith, sums up our approach to clearing your old claims: 

“DCS A/R Special Projects services are geared towards tackling as many claims as possible. Our goal is to touch every claim once to see what's going on, provide that information to the office, and then do everything we can to clean up those claims to the best of our abilities.”

Bring Jeff’s expert team in for a Special Project, and you’ll see a financial boost for your dental business, and maybe even a more productive team and happier patients. Many of our client-partners are shocked by how much cash had been left on the table.

Will you keep leaving money on the table or let DCS collect it ASAP?

To recap, here are 3 signs your dental practice needs an A/R clean-up: 

• Sign #1: Your list of 60+ day dental insurance claims keeps growing
• Sign #2: Your team spends hours every week (or every day) chasing unpaid dental patient balances
• Sign #3: You can’t trust your dental A/R reports—or your decisions that are based on them

If your A/R has been quietly piling up, it’s not going to fix itself, and unpaid claims won’t wait forever—that timely filing clock is always ticking.

But with the right partner, you can recover all the revenue you’ve earned and finally enjoy the smooth, predictable cash flow your practice needs to grow.

DCS is here to clean up your A/R and get you the revenue you deserve: Book a free 30-minute consultation to get started today.