Hi, everybody. Let's break this down into the simple steps and figure out a way to use spreadsheets to simply and easily control your dental inventory, submit orders, and pretty much stay within a budget.
First, we're going to start with what we call Operatory Inventory Checklists. So that's going to be available for the download at the link below. You can use it. You can adjust it. It's an Excel Spreadsheet. The credit on that one goes to the Dentist of Omaha for providing the treatment room list, the one that you guys are looking at right now.
So we highly suggest you use that spreadsheet to track your items in each treatment room, meaning that you're going to go and open all the cabinets, all the drawers, everything you've got. Write down on that list, adjust it, and the most important part, put what you want the quantities to be, either for the day or for the week, meaning that before you guys implement this checklist, you'll need to decide if each treatment room will get restocked either on a daily basis or on a weekly basis.
And so you're going to put the stocked quantity, the quantity for that period of time, either the day or the week. Let's just say two carpules of red lidocaine. Most likely you're going to use a lot more Septocaine, so you're going to put that, and on and on and on and on, including a restorative. So the idea is to get everything that's in the room on that checklist. Whatever you can't figure out, that doesn't belong on that checklist, that means it doesn't belong in the room, so get rid of it. Buy a huge garbage can and just put it in the garbage can.
The last item on this list that's really important is to put who is in charge. So I always like to have the Responsible in Charge. I call them RIC, our lead dental assistant or assistant responsible for that treatment room, who is responsible for restocking that specific room. The idea is you want to have Responsible in Charge for that room.
So you got the list. Download the list. Take a look. Put it in the room. Laminate it. I wouldn’t suggest laminating it right away. Maybe try three or four times, adjust the quantities, adjust the products, and then laminate it.
Next, you are going to use the Purchase Order. That means, each assistant, or let's just say your lead assistant, we’ll call her Susan, will compile the Operatory Inventory checklists from your assistant(s). Then, Lead Assistant Susan will figure out the quantities of all the products that she needs to buy. Using the Purchase Order is an easy way to control which distributor will get which order.
So here's the process and how it will work. Lead Assistant Susan gets the Operatory Inventory Checklists from your assistant(s). Next, Susan goes onto the distributor website of your preference and, using your preferred vendors, puts an order together in the shopping cart. Then, she takes a screenshot the shopping cart, prints a copy with the twirl at the bottom, and puts it in a Purchase Order. So, the Purchase Order has to be filled out. Again, you can download it at the link in the bottom of this article. Download the spreadsheet called Purchase Order. Be sure to fill out which distributor, the total, etc. and text the screenshot over to the shopping cart.
Now, the next step of that would be using Dental Budget Tracker. By the way, the Purchase Order credit goes to Michael Lomaton of Dental Design SD a huge supporter of Zen. They provided this Purchase Order idea and the actual template.
Now, we're going to move into your Dental Budget Tracker Spreadsheet. That came from a good friend, David Bender at Village Dental at Saxony in Indiana, so huge credit goes to them for providing us a spreadsheet called Dental Budget Tracker. So once you get those Purchase Orders, you're going plug it in, into that specific month, what you guys are going to be using for that month with that distributor, for which week. Then the system will calculate for you what’s the month to date and things like that, and give you the total. I think it's called in Supply Budget Tracker. Somewhere at the top, for that month, it will tell you what it is. So all you have to put in is Allowed Spending. The remaining balance will be calculated automatically. Actual spending will be calculated automatically, and then Prior Month Collections, you guys are putting in for each individual month.
I will have to mention that ZenSupplies does it all for you automatically. You don't have to do it. The only thing you're going to have to do with Zen is just plug in your collection numbers for the previous month, but the PO process and putting it together, downloading spreadsheets and things like that, it's all done on Zen automatically.
So now, the last part that I want to mention, what a lot of you will do, specialty endo implants, oral surgery, and things like that. I would highly suggest you use a separate spreadsheet for each individual cart if you're tracking items separately. And we do have a checklist called EndoCart Westgate, and a huge credit goes to the Westgate Dental and the awesome assistants at the Westgate Dental who provided the checklist. You're going to use it, and again, it's the same concept as the first checklist. All the items listed and all the quantities that you need to keep in that endo cart.
So that's all for now. We've got the Operatory Inventory Checklist, where you're putting all the quantities. You've got the endo cart, oral surgery cart, or ortho cart. They can all have the checklist. Then your lead assistant is using the Purchase Order. It's absolutely the must to use that Purchase Order, and then you guys can plug it into the final spreadsheet, called Dental Budget Tracker, and only then the order can be submitted to the distributor.
Now, all these spreadsheets can be converted into two things. You can either convert it into Google Docs, so it's easy for everybody to have access and plug in the numbers, or I've been playing with a thing called Airtable. It's a new app. It is pretty much a spreadsheet on steroids. You can get a subscription and start using that spreadsheet specifically for tracking budgets and things like that.
I hope you guys enjoyed this. There's going to be a reference to this article at the bottom. For the full Dental Inventory Makeover Webinar that we did, where we go in detail on how to control the inventory, what to do with products and things like that in each individual treatment room. So I would highly suggest you check it out, and if you liked it, come back to this blog, read more, and we have a lot more videos coming up. Also, check out our podcast that's coming up really soon, called Zen and Work! See you later.
Please download the simple inventory control spreadsheet and other useful documents here:
Budget Allocations Guidelines
All Check Lists and Spreadsheets
Reference: https://www.zensupplies.com/blog/dental-inventory-makeover-webinar/
Thank you & Credit:
Dr. David Bender, DDS for providing Dental Budget Tracker Spreadsheet
Westgate Dental Care for providing Supply List for Endo Carts
The Dentist of Omaha for providing Treatment Room List