Dental practices · Owner led · $1M to $20M
Fractional CFO for dental practices
Business advice for principal dentists and dental practice owners on chair time, recall, fees and value. We help you fill the chairs with the right work, lift your dental practice profit margin and understand what the practice is worth well before you sell.
Who we work with
Owner led general and family dental practices turning over $1M to $20M, from a principal dentist with two or three chairs to a group with associates, oral health therapists and hygienists. Most principals still treat patients most days and run the business around the appointment book.
Underneath most questions sits one more: how much the practice really makes once the principal is paid a market wage for clinical work. That figure drives what you can afford to invest, what you take home and what a buyer will pay.
We also work with GP and medical centres and allied health practices, and the Healthcare Hub explains how practice economics differ.
The decisions we help with
Chair utilisation
How much of each chair’s open time is booked and producing, and which appointments fill it. A full book can still leave chairs idle in the gaps, and moving the right appointments lifts production without extra hours.
Hygiene and oral health therapist scheduling
Which appointments sit within your oral health therapist’s or hygienist’s scope, and whether their days match demand. Routine care with the right clinician frees dentist time for restorative work.
Recall
How many patients due for recall actually rebook, and what that is worth each year. Recall fills the hygiene book and leads to much of the restorative work that follows, so it is one of the first numbers we look at.
Fee reviews
When and how far to move fees, item by item, with health fund rebates and your patient base in mind. A review built on what each chair hour costs holds up better than a flat percentage across the board.
Associate arrangements
What associates are paid, how lab fees are shared and what each arrangement leaves the practice. We model the margin on each dentist’s book, so new arrangements are agreed on clear numbers.
Selling or buying a practice
How to value a dental practice in Australia starts with normalised earnings, then the factors a buyer weighs: location, lease, patient base and how much rests on the principal. We help you prepare for selling a dental practice, or test the asking price when you are buying, and a dental practice valuation sets the starting point.
Illustrative example · Four chair general dental practice
Chair time, recall and the oral health therapist
A four chair general practice with two dentists and an oral health therapist working three days a week turns over $2.0 million, with profit before interest, tax and depreciation of about $300,000 after paying the owner a market wage for clinical work. The book feels full, yet the chairs are in use for only 65 per cent of open hours, and treatment that patients have already accepted waits weeks for dentist time.
Three findings carry most of the value. About 600 hours of dentist time a year go on routine check up and clean appointments that sit within the oral health therapist’s scope. Fewer than half of patients due for recall rebook within three months. And restorative work already on treatment plans waits behind those routine appointments. Moving the routine appointments to the oral health therapist, and taking the therapist from three days to five, frees the dentists for restorative work at about $420 an hour of chair time against roughly $190 for hygiene. The two extra days also absorb recall growth once reminders and booking at the chair are in place.
65% to 75%
Chair use across open hours
+$278k
Fees a year, before any price rise
15% to 19.6%
Profit margin after the extra wages, lab fees and consumables
About $580k
Added value at an assumed four times earnings
Illustrative example, built from typical figures for a practice of this kind, not a client engagement. The value figure assumes a multiple of four times earnings; the multiple a buyer applies depends on location, lease, patient base and how much of the practice rests on the principal dentist.
How an engagement runs
Every engagement starts with a diagnostic. In the first weeks we read your financial statements and practice management reports, including production by provider, chair utilisation, recall and accepted treatment plans, along with associate agreements, rosters and payroll. You get a clear view of what drives your profit, where cash sits and the decisions that matter most this year.
The work then settles into a monthly rhythm: a short report on profit and cash, a rolling forecast and a meeting to decide what happens next. We work alongside your accountant, bookkeeper and practice manager and never replace them. Most of the work is virtual, with visits to the practice when they help, and the fractional CFO service page sets out the full scope.
Tools for dental practices
Dental practice valuation
An indicative range for your practice, based on maintainable earnings after a market wage for every owner dentist. Open the dental practice valuation.
Practice budget template
A 12 month budget for your practice from a few plain questions, ready to download for Excel with its formulas. Open the practice budget template.
Also useful for practices:
- Indicative Valuation Range: a first view of what the practice could be worth.
- Payroll to Revenue Benchmark: whether wages for dentists, therapists, dental assistants and reception sit in a sensible range.
- Revenue per FTE Calculator: production for each full time equivalent clinician and staff member.
- Debtor Days Diagnostic: how quickly patient accounts and payment plans are settled.
- Cash Runway Calculator and Buffer Check: how long cash would last through a quiet month or an equipment upgrade.
Articles for dental practice owners
- Where dental practices leave revenue on the chair through recall
- Why a dental chair only pays when it is producing
- How markup and margin differ when you set fees
- Finding the services that lose money inside a healthy margin
- The owner dependency discount buyers price in
- Selling now or building for two more years
- What buyers find in due diligence when sellers have not prepared
Every article that mentions dental practices is in the blog library’s dental view.
Common questions
Do you replace our accountant?
No. Your accountant keeps the tax returns, BAS and year end accounts, and your bookkeeper and practice manager keep running the day to day. We add the forward looking work: forecasts, profit by chair and by provider, and the numbers behind decisions on fees, associates and growth. We share what we find with your accountant, so everyone works from the same figures.
What does it cost?
The fractional CFO partnership starts from $3,750 a month. Engagements usually stay at the starting price. Some need closer oversight or a deeper assessment, and the scope and fee rise to match. The pricing page explains how everything is sized, and Find your fit confirms your price from your practice’s details.
Do you work with practices outside Brisbane?
Yes. We work with practices across Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, and further afield across Australia. Most of the monthly work happens over video calls and shared reports, with visits to the practice as each engagement needs, so distance changes little. The locations we serve page has the detail.
Can you help us prepare to sell the practice?
Yes. Much of what a buyer pays is set in the two or three years before a sale: clean, normalised earnings, less reliance on the principal, settled associate and lease arrangements, and a recall system that runs without you. We work through those with you, and when you need a figure, an indicative valuation starts from $4,500 and a comprehensive valuation from $13,500.
What do you need from us to start?
Read only access to your accounting software, the last two years of financial statements, reports from your practice management system and your associate agreements. A first meeting with you and your practice manager covers how the practice runs. Nothing needs to change in your systems before we start.
Put every chair hour to work
A 45 minute discovery call is complimentary, and you will come away with at least one practical observation about your practice.