Insights | 20 Apr 2021

Bookkeeping tips for medical businesses

Reclaim hours and streamline your bookkeeping process to have more time to do what you do best, run your business.

Medical business owners are constantly juggling tasks from accounting and finance, to marketing and sales, to staffing and everyday tasks, and if you’re a doctor running a clinic you also have patients to see. To help you reclaim your time, we have identified our top tips on how the latest accounting software can help increase efficiency in your bookkeeping process.

  1. Add repeating invoices or bills
    Xero will automatically create an invoice or bill for you based on the frequency you specify. Templates can be added by clicking the dropdown arrow on the “new” button in invoices or bills screen. You can also use placeholders if you want the invoice or bill to note a certain month, for example “Fees for services provided in May”. For example, this could be used where your rent or phone bill are the same amount each month.
  2. Use ABA files to pay wages and make a bulk supplier payments
    An ABA file can be uploaded to internet banking if you have bank account details saved in Xero for your suppliers or employees. This can decrease the time it takes to pay your suppliers and employees as well as reduce chances of an error as you don’t have to re-type payment amounts into internet banking.
  3. Automatically code bank transactions
    Xero utilises bank rules to automatically code a bank transaction based on given conditions. Bank rules can be created from the reconciliation page. For example, Medicare payments with a reference number based on a doctor’s provider number can be automatically coded to a “Patient fees payable” account on the balance sheet to be included in the next service fee calculation.
  4. Use the inbuilt calculator to help avoid an entry error
    This tool allows you to perform basic math functions directly in the quantity, unit price and discount fields.
  5. Let Hubdoc do data entry
    Hubdoc automatically extracts key information from every document and will then create a bill in Xero with the original supplier invoice attached. The bill can then be matched with the payment from the bank account in Xero. Hubdoc is now included in Starter, Standard and Premium Xero subscriptions.

Learn more

Investing some extra time now to set up automated processing could save you long hours in future. It may even produce better reporting as automated data entry reduces the chances of user errors. You would know that Xero has many functions to help your business run smoother but with many options available, it can be a daunting task to research your options. That’s where we can help.

Our advisors can help research, facilitate or optimise solutions tailored to your needs. To learn more, please contact Kristy Baxter on taxmed@pilotpartners.com.au or phone (07) 3023 1300.

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