446: Matt Travis: The Guy Who Gets Dental Labs Paid

Hey, Voices of the Bench community! Erich Neuhaus, Marketing Manager at Ivoclar here. Bring greater efficiency and flexibility to your denture workflow with Ivotion, Ivoclar's digital denture system. Ivotion helps labs reduce manual production steps while delivering predictable, high-quality aesthetics. With new shade options available in both Ivotion Dent Multi and our Ivotion Monolithic Discs, you can broaden your offering and deliver more personalized results. Reach out to your local Ivoclar representative today and discover what I've ocean can do for your lab. NOLA Lab Fest is back, and Voices From the Bench will be recording live from the Hilton New Orleans Riverside on October 16th and 17th! Join Elvis and Barbara as they hang out with the HyperDent team, talk shop with some of the best in the dental industry, and host the always-entertaining Lab Family Feud. The fun kicks off Thursday, October 15th, with Jude Grayson leading a half-day workshop for lab owners and department leaders, sponsored by HyperDent. While you're there, check out Roland DGA's CAM trade-in special, where you can trade in your old CAM software for HyperDent and unlock the full potential of your mill with better milling quality, faster milling times, and the ability to mill Ivotion dentures with Elevate denture solutions. Registration is open now at NOLALabFest.com, and spots are limited. Don't miss out on the fun, the learning, and probably a few too many beignets! Getting paid for your work should be the easy part of running a dental lab, right? Unfortunately, that’s not always how it goes! This week,we sit down with Matt Travis from Burt and Associates, a familiar name to many in the dental laboratory industry who specializes in helping labs collect unpaid invoices. Matt shares how he got his start in dental lab collections, including a memorable first collection involving Mike Zuber, a little too much fun the night before, and a $5,000 invoice that got paid before he even left the dental office. But there’s a lot more to collections than making phone calls and demanding payment. Matt explains how Burton Associates approaches overdue accounts, why labs can get into trouble by continuing to send cases to customers who aren’t paying, and how difficult it can be to decide when a customer has become a debtor. The conversation also covers credit applications, checking a customer’s credit before extending terms, protecting accounts receivable, and why having clear policies in place can save a lab from a whole lot of headaches. With stories of unpaid balances reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars, this episode is a reminder that doing great work is only part of running a successful dental lab. You have to collect the money, too! Your customers are checking you out on social media long before they ever fill out a form or pick up the phone. By the time they reach you, they’ve already started forming an opinion. That’s why consistency on social media matters. Creating content is hard. Posting consistently is even harder. That’s why we built icortica Social. Create, schedule, publish, and report on your social media all in one place — and let your entire team contribute. With a simple QR code, your team can send photos and videos straight from their phones to marketing, whether they’re in the lab or at an event. icortica Social works as a standalone app, so no existing icortica subscription is required. Make social media easier. Stay consistent. Grow your presence. Check it out at icortica.com/social. Dental lab owners and managers — are you spending too much time chasing paperwork, checking portals, tracking cases, and answering doctors asking, “Is my crown done yet?” You didn’t start a dental lab to become a full-time paperwork wrangler. LabNCloud is the all-in-one, cloud-based platform built by techs, for techs, with 90+ features to streamline your entire lab — from case tracking and invoicing to shipping, time tracking, doctor portals, and automatic digital file routing. Stop managing chaos and start managing your lab. Visit LabNCloud.com to book your free personalized demo. And mention “Elvis is Handsome” to get your first month free. LabNCloud — the operating system for dental labs. Built by techs, for techs. Will your next equipment purchase pay for itself? It’s the question every lab owner asks. But here’s another one: How much is it costing you not to invest? Every remake, hour of downtime, and case outsourced because you’re at capacity eats into your profits. The right milling solution can help increase production, reduce interruptions, and keep your technicians focused on revenue-generating work. That’s why dental labs continue to choose Roland DGSHAPE DWX milling solutions. Built for dependable performance, they help keep your lab running smoothly and create opportunities for growth. Because the best investment is one that keeps paying you back. Learn more at rolanddental.com. Special Guest: Matt Travis.