EXACT Virtual Assistant: a VA who runs the front desk inside Software of Excellence

Nobody searches “exact virtual assistant” because the practice is running smoothly. You search it because the front desk is the busiest square metre in the building: the phone is ringing, a patient is standing at the counter, the Short Notice List hasn’t been touched since the last cancellation went unfilled, and the debtors report has not been opened since BAS time. EXACT by Software of Excellence, a Henry Schein One company, is very good software. It is also software that assumes somebody has the hours to work it, and in a lot of Australian practices, nobody does.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your EXACT

Morning, before the first patient is in the chair, the day gets a pass. Unconfirmed appointments chased by SMS. Gaps in the book flagged to the practice manager while there is still time to do something about them. Appointment types and lengths checked, because a new patient exam booked into a 20-minute slot ruins everyone’s afternoon. And a quick sweep of outstanding medical histories: any Patient Portal form that hasn’t come back gets chased now, so nobody is filling out a Clinipad at check-in while the chair sits empty.

Then the first cancellation lands, say 8:50 for an 11:15 slot. This is where the Short Notice List earns its keep, and where most practices quietly fail. EXACT can send the offer out by SMS, but the list only performs if someone curates it: the right patients on it, their availability windows recorded, appointment lengths that actually match the gaps that open up. Your VA owns that list. They keep it stocked, they push the offer out when a slot opens, and they action the replies the same morning instead of letting three “yes please” texts sit unread until the slot has passed.

Through the day, the VA handles the booking traffic that doesn’t need a human at the physical desk: new patient enquiries entered properly, reschedules, confirmations, the follow-up messages after failed-to-attend appointments. If phones are the pain point, the same person can take overflow calls as a virtual receptionist, answering as your practice during AU business hours.

End of day, money. Payments and HICAPS settlements reconciled against the day sheet, so cashing up doesn’t come with a mystery discrepancy, and anything that left the building unclaimed or unpaid gets flagged the same day, not found at the end of the month.

The weekly passes: recalls, Care Manager and the debtors report

The daily rhythm keeps the book true. The weekly passes are where the revenue hides.

Recalls first. EXACT’s automated recall sequences do a genuinely good job on the patients who respond to a text, and you should let the automation carry them. But every practice has the tail: patients whose recalls failed, lapsed, or bounced through three messages without a booking. Automation does not fix the tail, a phone call does. Your VA takes a weekly pass through the failed and lapsed recall lists, rings the patients the sequence couldn’t move, and re-queues everyone properly, so the recall effectiveness figure in MyPractice Cloud reflects reality rather than a well-configured sequence talking to itself.

Care Manager next. This is the report most owners know exists and almost nobody works: patients with diagnosed treatment, estimate produced, appointment never made. It is diagnosed dentistry sitting in a queue. The VA works it on a set day each week: follows up the treatment plan estimates, answers the admin questions (cost, timing, health fund gap), and books the appointment. What they never do is re-argue the clinical case; if a patient wants to discuss whether they really need the crown, that conversation comes back to you.

Then the debtors report, run weekly by ageing bucket and worked on a chasing cadence you approve once: friendly reminder at one interval, statement at the next, phone call after that. Rejected HICAPS claims get followed up and resubmitted rather than written off through inattention, and unpaid gap amounts get chased while the appointment is still fresh in the patient’s memory.

Monthly, the VA logs into the MyPractice Cloud dashboards and pulls the numbers you actually steer by: FTA rate, recall effectiveness, chair utilisation, average hourly rate. You get a one-page summary. The reporting suite is excellent, but it only helps if someone reads it, and that someone has not been you for a while.

The honest bit

A few things EXACT will not do, no matter who you hire, and one thing to plan for.

EXACT typically lives on your practice server. That means a remote VA does not just get a username and a login page; your IT provider sets up secure remote access, the same way Software of Excellence’s own support connects. It is routine, but it is a real task, so it happens in week one of onboarding, deliberately, not as a surprise.

The Short Notice List is only as good as its upkeep. It offers slots to patients somebody added, with availability somebody recorded. An empty or stale list sends nothing, which is why “we have the Short Notice List but cancellations still go unfilled” is such a common story. The fix is not a setting, it is a person who owns the list.

The HICAPS terminal is physical. A remote VA cannot tap a patient’s card, so on-the-day claiming stays with whoever is on site. Everything around the terminal, reconciliation, rejections, resubmissions, gap chasing, is exactly the work that piles up, and exactly what the VA takes.

And the automated recalls, good as they are, plateau. The patients still coming after three texts were always going to come. The lapsed tail needs phone calls, and no version of EXACT makes those.

What stays with you

Dentistry is a regulated profession and the line here is not negotiable. Clinical charting, treatment notes, radiographs, treatment plan content and item number decisions stay with your clinicians, and not as a policy sentence, as a permission: the VA’s EXACT security group simply does not open that part of the software. Fee schedule changes, health fund participation decisions and anything resembling clinical advice stay owner-side. If a patient says something clinical in a phone call or a message, “this tooth has started aching since the filling”, it escalates to you under a written rule, verbatim, the same day. The VA moves the admin; the dentistry never leaves the practice.

What it costs and where to start

EXACT front-desk work sits on DotVA’s admin tier, $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, and most practices land at 10-15 hours a week, roughly $500-1,100 a month. Placement takes 7-10 business days, then 5-7 days supervised inside your EXACT before any solo work, starting with the appointment book and the Short Notice List because that is where the fastest wins are. There is a $500 refundable deposit credited to your first month, a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and no lock-in beyond 14 days notice. We have made 87+ Australian placements since 2024, and dental front-desk overflow is one of the patterns we see most.

If you want the wider picture for practices like yours, the dental practices page goes deeper, the virtual receptionist page covers the phones side, and the VA cost guide breaks down the pricing properly. Otherwise, book a discovery call with Jenn and bring your recall effectiveness number. She will not judge it, but she will ask about it.