Collected
Collected means money in the practice account, reconciled against the practice management system.
Collected is the only production figure that cannot be argued with, because it is in the ledger. It is also the hardest to report, because it requires reconciling the marketing record against the practice management system every month rather than trusting the customer relationship manager.
Treatment planned production is the number most of this industry reports, because it is the biggest number available and it arrives first. Cases get downgraded, financing gets declined, and patients disappear between the plan and the deposit. Reporting planned instead of collected roughly doubles a return on ad spend figure without anybody technically lying.
What is included and what is excluded
Counts
- Deposits and payments received into the practice account
- Lender disbursements that have landed
- Staged payments, counted in the month each one arrives
Does not count
- Treatment planned or presented production
- Approved financing that has not disbursed
- Refunded or charged back payments
- Accounts receivable and outstanding balances
A worked example
A cohort presents 400,000 dollars of treatment planned production.
- 01Treatment planned: $400,000
- 02Cases downgraded or declined at financing: $150,000
- 03Balances still outstanding at month end: $60,000
- 04$400,000 - $150,000 - $60,000 = $190,000
Collected production is $190,000, not $400,000.
How this differs from
- Started
Started is the commitment. Collected is the cash that followed it.
- Return on ad spend
Return on ad spend should be calculated on collected, which roughly halves the figure.
- Offline conversion attribution
Attribution is what lets a collected figure be traced back to the media that produced it.
These definitions come from our published measurement standard. Read The Arch Standard for the reporting rules they sit inside, or see every term.
Want this measured in your practice? A consult walks through how we track it, if that is useful.
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