Why history matters
A single month tells you very little. The money for a month of work arrives over the next several weeks, so a fair check of collections looks at about three months together. Trends need months behind them, and so does any conversation about a raise or a new offer. A few months of history means all of that works from the first week instead of the third month.
Where the numbers are
- The office’s production report. Ask for your production by provider, by procedure, for the period, exported to Excel. It is a few clicks in Dentrix, Eaglesoft or Open Dental, and it is the most complete record there is.
- Pay stubs or remittance statements. Most show the period, the production or collections figure your pay was based on, any lab deduction and what you were paid.
- Reports the office sent. A monthly production or collections summary, even a screenshot in a text message.
- Your own notes or spreadsheets, however rough.
- Year-end totals. A 1099 or W-2 is not monthly, but it is a useful check that your months add up.
What is enough
Production alone for each month is enough to be useful. Collections, pay and lab make the pay checks work for those months too, so add them where you have them. Do not hold back a month because one figure is missing; a partial month is still history.
Daily detail for old months is almost never worth reconstructing by hand. If the office can export a production report you get it for free; if not, one total per month gives you the trend and the checks without the archaeology.
Sanity checks before you trust it
- Do the months add up to roughly your year-end total?
- Is any month wildly out of line? Check whether it was a short month, a holiday or a typo.
- Were you paid on production or on collections in that period? Contracts change; note when yours did.
How cuspd does it
cuspd's Import page takes past months three ways. Upload the office's production report (Excel, CSV or PDF, one month or many) and every procedure lands in your Log by day; patient names on it are only used to group visits and are never saved. Upload a sheet of month totals with a column for the month and a column for production, plus practice, collections, pay, lab and reported production if they are there. Or type the months into a grid. Nothing is added until you check it, and a month can be cleared and redone. Once they are in, Overview and Compensation have your history from day one. See also how to log going forward.