Every month, a dental clinic owner should track ten numbers: collected versus billed, money outstanding and its age, new patients, no-show rate, treatment acceptance, revenue per chair-hour, chair utilisation, top treatments, revenue by speciality or doctor, and recalls due. Each can be worked out from your own appointments, plans and payments with a simple formula. Compare each with your own earlier months rather than with someone else’s benchmark.
The ten numbers at a glance
| # | Number | How to work it out | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Collected vs billed | Collection ratio = collected ÷ billed × 100 | Whether work done is turning into money |
| 2 | Outstanding, by age | Unpaid balances, grouped 0–30, 31–60, 61–90 and 90+ days | How much money is at risk |
| 3 | New patients | Patients whose first visit was in the month, by source | Whether the clinic is growing, and from where |
| 4 | No-show rate | No-shows ÷ appointments due × 100 | Chair time lost |
| 5 | Treatment acceptance | Value accepted ÷ value advised × 100 | Whether patients go ahead with plans |
| 6 | Revenue per chair-hour | Collected ÷ chair-hours open | How productive each chair is |
| 7 | Chair utilisation | Booked chair-hours ÷ chair-hours open × 100 | How much room there is for more patients |
| 8 | Top treatments | Revenue and count per treatment, ranked | What really drives the clinic |
| 9 | Revenue by speciality or doctor | Revenue grouped by department or by doctor | Where consultants and associates add the most |
| 10 | Recalls due | Patients due a check-up; booked ÷ contacted × 100 | Appointments you can fill next month |
Decide each definition once, write it down, and keep it the same every month. A number that changes its definition cannot be compared with itself.
Is the clinic getting paid for the work it does?
Billed is the value of work done or billed in the month; collected is the money that actually came in. They differ because treatment courses are paid in parts, and because some patients pay late.
Collection ratio = collected in the period ÷ billed in the same period × 100. For example, if you billed ₹6,20,000 in a month and collected ₹5,40,000, the ratio is about 87%. A month above 100% is possible when old dues come in, so look at a three-month window as well as the single month.
Outstanding is the total of every unpaid balance on the last day of the month. On its own it hides the real risk, so split it by age:
- 0–30 days — usually a course in progress; normal.
- 31–60 days — send a polite reminder with a UPI link.
- 61–90 days — a call from the front desk, and a note on the patient’s next visit.
- Over 90 days — the owner decides: one more personal call, a payment plan or a write-off with a reason.
The habits that keep both numbers healthy are in our guide to dental billing with UPI and part-payments.
Are patients coming — and coming back?
New patients are people whose first visit happened in the month — count visits, not registrations, so a form filled online by someone who never came does not inflate the number. Record the source for each one: referral by a patient, Google, walk-in, WhatsApp, a camp or a doctor referral. Over a few months the sources show you where to spend effort.
Recalls due are patients whose last check-up was longer ago than your recall interval, often six months. Two numbers matter:
- Recalls due this month — the size of the opportunity.
- Recall conversion = patients who booked ÷ patients contacted × 100. For example, if 100 of 120 due patients were contacted and 38 booked, conversion is 38%.
Our guide to a dental patient recall system covers how to raise it.
How much chair time is being lost to no-shows?
No-show rate = appointments missed without notice ÷ appointments due in the period × 100. For example, if 26 of 400 appointments due in a month were no-shows, the rate is 6.5%.
- Count late cancellations (for example, less than a day’s notice) as their own number; they cost almost as much chair time.
- Do not count cancellations made with fair notice — that time can be rebooked.
- Look at the rate by day of the week, time of day and new versus returning patients; the pattern usually tells you what to fix.
To turn the rate into rupees, our free no-show cost calculator multiplies your own numbers: appointments per day, no-show rate, average revenue per visit and working days.
Are patients going ahead with the treatment you advise?
Track three amounts each month, by value and by count:
- Advised — treatment plans presented to patients.
- Accepted — plans the patient agreed to start.
- Done — procedures completed from accepted plans.
Acceptance = accepted ÷ advised × 100. Completion = done ÷ accepted × 100. For example, if ₹8,00,000 of treatment was advised, ₹4,80,000 accepted and ₹3,60,000 done, acceptance is 60% and completion is 75% — and the ₹1,20,000 gap is pending treatment your front desk can follow up. Low acceptance points to how plans are presented — see dental treatment plan acceptance — and low completion points to scheduling and follow-up.
How productive is each chair?
Chair-hours open = chairs × hours open per day × working days in the month.
Revenue per chair-hour = collected ÷ chair-hours open. Chair utilisation = booked chair-hours ÷ chair-hours open × 100.
For example, a clinic with 3 chairs open 9 hours a day for 26 days has 702 chair-hours. If it collected ₹7,02,000, it earned ₹1,000 per chair-hour; if 456 of those hours were booked, utilisation was about 65%. Low utilisation with good revenue per booked hour means you need more patients; high utilisation with low revenue per hour means you need to look at the mix of work and prices. Before adding a chair, check that the existing ones are busy.
Alongside these, keep profit after expenses = collected − expenses (rent, salaries, materials, lab bills, consultant fees, software), so a busy month is not mistaken for a profitable one.
Which treatments and specialities earn the most?
- Top treatments — rank by revenue and by count. A treatment high on count but low on revenue may be under-priced; check the average fee: revenue ÷ count.
- By speciality — group revenue into departments such as general dentistry, endodontics, orthodontics, prosthodontics and implants, periodontics, paediatric dentistry and oral surgery.
- By doctor — for associates and visiting consultants, look at revenue after their fee, not before.
This tells you which consultant days to add, which services to promote and where a price list needs review.
How do you run a monthly review in 30 minutes?
- Fix one day each month, such as the second working day, and keep it.
- Write the ten numbers next to last month and the same month last year.
- For each number that moved noticeably, write one sentence on why.
- Choose one or two actions only — for example, call every due over 60 days, or send recalls to everyone overdue.
- Check last month’s actions: did they move the number?
Common mistakes: mixing billed with collected, counting cancellations as no-shows, changing definitions between months, and chasing a benchmark from another city instead of improving on your own last quarter.
How Odontra helps
Odontra’s Reports open with five numbers — collected, owed, profit, visits done and new patients — a few plain sentences on what stands out, and tabs for money, visits, treatments, patients and messages; every figure has an ⓘ that says how it was counted. You can view this month, last month, the last 3 months, this year or a custom range compared with the period before, and see who owes the most and how old the dues are, busiest days and hours, no-shows, chairs and doctors, where new patients come from, and who has not been back in six months. Pending treatment and Follow-ups list unfinished work and check-ups due, payments and appointments download as CSV, and on Pro and Premium “Ask your data” answers questions such as “Is mahine kitne RCT hue?” — the AI only works out what to count, and the app counts it from your own records. Any number not on a report can be worked out with the formulas above from the CSV downloads.