During challenging economic times, dental-practice owners need every advantage they can get. In addition to advice from their consultants, most dentists receive a four-page monthly financial statement from their accountants, a cover letter, and a trial-balance statement of their income and balance sheet accounts.  This statement normally reflects the current month and YTD results.  That's it!  This is the financial information most dentists use to make their routine and key practice decisions - and it's not enough for sound practice management.

With very little training in a short period of time, you can take those standard monthly financial statements from your accountant and convert them into remarkably useful management insights.  Mere awareness of the bottom line is one thing, but clearly seeing the impact of even slight changes to the practice can make the difference in long-term profitability.

The Dental Practice Financial Calculator is a highly effective management tool designed to promote the financial success of a dental practice.  It creates 16 graphical and summary reports that provide a unique method for reviewing practice financials and employee productivity and assisting with routine and crucial practice decisions.  It provides everything you need for strategic practice financial management, employee productivity planning, adding partners, or buying/selling a dental practice.

• Shows financial and productivity results in clear, understandable graphical reports.
• Calculates the fair market value of your dental practice.
• Offers an easy-to-implement practice partnership tool that presents a choice of three easy-to-understand, logical formulas for compensation and profit distribution.  These methods simultaneously encourage individual productivity.

The software is priced at just $399, making it easily affordable for every dentist.  The return on this software investment can be rapid and significant.  Merely identifying even one management issue or assisting in one crucial practice decision can easily pay back the cost many times over.

The software creates clear and understandable graphical financial and productivity reports using data that's readily available from your business software or practice accountant.  It requires very little training and very little time. In about an hour, you, your office manager, or your accountant can learn the software.  After that, it only takes a few minutes each month to enter data, review and understand the practice's financial and productivity results, and get new perspectives on routine or crucial practice decisions.  The software provides an excellent way to review business activities and results.  It's fun and quickly becomes intuitive.

The software separates the conventional income statement into four major activity-based categories.  This enables you to quickly understand the financial drivers that affect the profitability of the practice and spot unusual items that may require further investigation.

Another important report the software generates is the productivity graphics.  Dentist and hygienist productivity appears clearly in graphical form and helps you set and measure reasonable productivity objectives.  These reports can also be used for performance reviews or other communications with professionals.  The graphics were also designed to give a new practice owner, who may have little prior management experience, a tool to discuss productivity with employees.

Beyond the rich functionality, our software can actually serve as an excellent tool for learning practice-management concepts.  The terminology used throughout the program has been carefully chosen and structured as concisely and as clearly as possible to explain what you need to know.

The software is virtually foolproof.  The only mistake that you can make is to enter incorrect data. You cannot make a mistake that affects or damages the program.  The software was designed for computer, accounting, and financial novices.  In clear, understandable terms, the program explains financial formulas and terminology that you will need to understand when buying, selling, or bringing a partner into a dental practice.

Even if you are not interested in using the software as a management tool, you can use it to calculate a fair market value of a dental practice simply by entering a one-month estimate of financial and productivity metrics and entering data for the nine data categories in the Control Panel.  This estimate should be based on the practice's current or anticipated level of business and expenses.  (For optimal projections, enter 24 months of prior historical data.)

The Dental Practice Financial Calculator creates custom reports that identify the strengths and weaknesses of the dental practice and assist with financial assessments, forecasting, and employee planning.  In about an hour, you can calculate the fair market value of your practice, examine productivity trends, and analyze critical data if you are considering adding a partner.  You can also gauge exactly where the practice is and determine how to increase the bottom line.  Graphical summary reports show money spent, hours worked, and staff productivity.  For forecasting, the software provides a "What If" feature to show the impact of various scenarios.

The initial version of my software product evolved from the financial-management assistance I provided Dr. Joseph Pesicek shortly after he purchased his dental practice in 2004.  The software was developed over a two-year period through our careful collaboration, and draws on his experiences as a new practice owner.  Dr. Pesicek was less than 30 when he purchased his dental practice and paid a consulting company $20,000 to determine its fair market value.  Dr. Pesiceck earned his degree in 2002 from UNC-Chapel Hill.  He had no previous business experience, and had held only nominal summer employment.  Two years after graduating from dental school, he found himself running a business with 11 employees.

Major design considerations regarding the targeted customer base were:

• Computer skills
• Business-management exposure
• Prior supervisory experience
• General understanding of accounting and finance

My goal was to develop a dental practice strategic financial management tool that would be easy to use by professionals trained in medical science rather than business management.  Most dental schools offer limited courses in finance and management in their dentistry curricula.  I hope to persuade dental students to use my free, downloadable practice model to assist in their finance and management courses.

The American Dental Association lists 40 vendors in its directory of practice management software solutions.  But these solutions fail to address the strategic challenges that practice owners face.

The Dental Practice Financial Calculator is different.  It doesn't automate bookkeeping, set appointments, store images or provide other dentistry related services.  Instead, it focuses on the financial aspects of practice management not tactical processes and workflows  No other dental-practice programs address the full range of strategic financial issues like calculating the fair market value of a practice or bringing in a partner.

Only one other software vendor focuses on practice financial management - Sikka Software Corporation - which positions its solution as "business intelligence and optimization."

Sikka builds business management and business intelligence solutions for the dental and medical provider marketplace.  It focuses on certain key areas of the practice and return on investment (ROI) in marketing, patients, fees, and insurance that enable practice owners to make informed business decisions. Sikka focuses on enabling dentists to focus on essential areas that require attention. However, Sikka is very expensive - $200 to $500 per month, depending on functionality used.  By contrast, The Dental Practice Financial Calculator sells for a one-time licensing fee of $399 - with free telephone support.

While very impressive, Sikka Software requires a major commitment to learn, use, and integrate with other practice management and financial software.  If the practice financial statements are not generated by QuickBooks or similar software (perhaps prepared by an accountant), you cannot download them into Sikka.

By contrast, our software was designed for computer, accounting, and financial novices.  Everything is completely configured and there are no adjustments required or allowed.  The scroll bars are the only way to navigate or change the view of each screen. You enter data by pointing and clicking on clearly identified yellow cells.  There are only 28 financial data fields and three productivity data fields for each dentist and hygienist that you record each month - information that's easily obtainable from the monthly trial balance reports prepared by most practice accountants or practice software. It only takes a few minutes each month to enter required data and the process is very intuitive.

Below is a summary of the personalized, comprehensive reports that Dental Practice Financial Calculator can generate.

Productivity Graphics - Dentist and hygienist productivity appears clearly in graphical form.  These reports help you better understand your personal productivity and compare the performance of all other professionals in the practice.  They also give new practice owners (who may have less employee management experience) a tool to discuss productivity with employees.

Dashboard (Stoplight) Graphics - On one screen, you can view six key graphics that alert you of any variances that must be addressed.  There is a graph for all four Activity-Based categories, and a similar graph for Profit and Cash in the Bank.  All graphs highlight the same information for each respective category.

Percentage Graphics - Activity-Based categories are expressed as a percentage of Dental Service $s Provided.  This allows you to quickly see expense trends and monthly variances.

Cumulative Income Statement Graphic - This shows a graphical view of the cumulative dollars and the percentage of Dental Service $s consumed in each Activity-Based category.

In addition, the software generates several easy-to-understand reports to make this software a complete management tool for dental practices.

Activity-Based Income Statement - By separating the conventional income statement into four major Activity-Based categories, this report enables you to quickly understand the financial drivers that affect the profitability of the practice and spot unusual items that may require further investigation.

The Trend Analysis feature helps you put your current year financial results in perspective by comparing them to your three prior years of financial results.  One key metric: the percentage of revenue for each activity-based expense category.  It helps you understand how current financial results compare to your recent history.  This software segment includes simple instructions to pull your prior years financial data from your 1120S Corporation Income Tax statement.

Manpower Input collects salary information for employees and lets you perform "what-if" analyses for labor-planning.  This enables you to fully understand the financial impact of adding new production or administrative employees.  You can add new employees or add “what-if” employees for practice planning.  The “what-if” employees do not change the current run-rate projection or historical data - only the projected future forecast.  This helps you understand the potential financial impact of new production or administrative employees - before they are hired.

Planning -- Perform "what-if" analyses for existing employees and fully understand the financial impact of new production employees.  You can model various productivity outputs for your existing employees and “what-if” employees that you added in the Manpower module.  The productivity scenarios you create do not change the current run-rate projections - only the projected future forecast.

The Forecasting software segment enables you to compare historical financial data against your current run-rate model and a projected financial forecast.  These detailed statistics help you make crucial practice decisions and get a clearer view of the future.  You can also generate “what-if” analyses that simulate various planning strategies by simply changing any variable (e.g. patients per day, billing rates, practice expenses, etc.).  The Forecasting software module displays income statement results for seven practice scenarios.  Each scenario listed above is presented in an activity-based format for easy identification of major trends.

Fair Market Value Appraisal - The software can determine the current dollar value of the dental practice.  This appraisal can be presented to a potential buyer or partner to secure a loan to purchase or buy into the practice.

Partnership Calculator - This tool presents a choice of three easy-to-understand, logical formulas for compensation and profit distribution. In other words, this is where partners go to understand and agree upon the compensation and profit distribution.  These methods simultaneously encourage individual productivity.

The Partnership Calculator shows how to add a partner (without paying expensive attorneys' fees).  It also walks you through reconciling compensation calculations against tax or other period requirements.  The software can accommodate up to five partners.

In addition to income statement and productivity graphs and reports generated by The Dental Practice Financial Calculator (DPFC), the 2011 upgrade allows you to maintain an archive of your prior balance sheets or create a new balance sheet by “backing into it.”  (Backing into a balance sheet merely means using a source or methodology as the period balance for each account.)  Instructions in the model fully explain a methodology of how to create every balance sheet position you need to successfully financially manage any dental practice.

The Dental Practice Financial Calculator - 2011 provides a unique method for financial management accounting that eliminates needless and costly work to generate monthly and annual financial statements – whether they’re prepared by an accountant or using QuickBooks or other financial software.

You don’t need traditional software to generate financial statements for any cash-basis dental practice.  In fact, this costly process is a waste of time and money because traditional financial statements offer little assistance in helping you make strategic business decisions or understand the financial foundation of your practice.

Save time, money, and unnecessary frustration and stop paying your CPA or wasting time generating financial statements you don’t need.  The DPFC lets non-financial professionals like you understand the transactions that flow through your business.  This unique method of practice financial management accounting is more cost-efficient and effective than using statements from your accountant or using basic financial accounting software.  Learn How »»»

Below is a summary of the three additional software segments that allow you to maintain or create a balance sheet.

Balance Sheet – You don’t need to maintain a balance sheet to use this model.  There are also no tax requirements for maintaining a balance sheet.  Believe it or not, it’s very easy to create a balance sheet using our unique method that gives you the same exact balance sheet positions that you’d generate using QuickBooks or similar financial accounting software.  (It is a good general practice to create a balance sheet at the end of each year.)

Trial Balance – The trial balance calculation is only useful if you are maintaining a balance sheet in this model.  All accounts in the chart of accounts are known as the trial balance.  All account balances in this statement of accounts must total to zero.  If the trial balance does not total to zero, there is a mistake that must be adjusted.  This tab in the model is a calculation that allows you to determine if your trial balance accounts total to zero.

Journey Entry Register – This tab allows you to maintain a record of transactions that normally fall outside the scope of the day-to-day operations of a dental practice.  If you are maintaining a balance sheet, you should record journal entries as an audit trail to prove some balance sheet positions (e.g. a debit or credit transaction made to an equity account).

• The tabs in the software are the same as seen on the Web site. The Fair Market Value appraisal is presented in the last three tabs.
• You cannot make a mistake that will affect or damage the software.
• Every tab can be printed by using the Excel print icon (print parameters cannot be changed).  Each tab must be printed individually.
• Use the "Print Preview" icon to see a screen image of how the printed tabs will appear on paper.
• Only the yellow cells can be used to enter data or clicked on using your mouse.
• Every tab is password-protected, which limits the number of Microsoft Excel functions that can be used.
• The "Print,"Print Preview," and "Save" icons are the only icons or functions you use.
• Everything in the software is completely set.  There are no adjustments required or allowed.
• The Excel scroll bars are the only way to navigate or change the view of the screen.
• To enter data in the yellow cells, use the mouse to point to the desired cell and click.
• Save files using the "Save" Excel icon like any other Excel file.
• The optimal monitor screen resolution is 1024 by 768 pixels.
• Both the financial rate and financial criteria that were used for the FMV calculation can be updated or replaced with different rates or criteria that you or your financial advisor feel are more appropriate for your practice.  Try changing some of the financial rates; you will be amazed how it changes the appraisals.
• The simple terminology used in the FMV tabs is intended to be a teaching tool and reference guide to define commonly used financial formulas used in most FMV calculations.

We stand by our product.  If for any reason you are not completely satisfied, we will give you a full refund - for any reason, or no reason at all within 30 days from the date of purchase.  Please call our toll-free number 866-828-9140 and a credit will be issued immediately.  That is how convinced we are that you will use this tool as long as you own your practice!  Our unwavering goal is to exceed your expectations - in software and customer support.