At Oak City Accounting, we work with a lot of medical, dental, legal practices and the same three issues show up over and over, often years before anyone notices.
1️⃣ Mixing business and personal expenses. It starts small... a client dinner on the personal card, a subscription that's "basically for work." But once personal and business spending blur together, your books stop reflecting reality. Come tax time, you're either missing deductions or scrambling to reconstruct a year of transactions.
2️⃣ Treating owner draws as an expense. We see this constantly with partners and solo practitioners: owner draws get coded as salary or operating expense instead of equity. It quietly distorts your P&L, makes your practice look less profitable than it is, and can throw off everything from loan applications to valuation conversations.
3️⃣ Letting accounts receivable go unreconciled. Professional practices run on invoicing but when AR isn't reconciled regularly, you lose visibility into who actually owes you money. We've seen practices carrying thousands in "phantom" receivables that were written off, paid, or never collectible in the first place.
None of these are signs of a poorly run practice. They're just what happens when the person delivering the service is also the one trying to keep the books straight.
If any of these sound familiar, it might be worth a second look at your practice's financials — reach out to Oak City Accounting, your CPA for medical, dental, and legal professionals.
