The practice bought a dashboard two years ago. It has 34 tiles, three of them in red, and the office manager opens it on the first of the month to screenshot it for the owner. Nobody acts on it because nothing on it says what to do.
A useful dashboard is smaller than that, and every tile on it answers one of two questions: is this normal, and if not, who do I call.
What are the rules?
- One role per dashboard. The owner, the office manager and the hygiene lead do not need the same eight numbers. The owner needs money and trend. The manager needs today and this week. Hygiene needs its own column.
- At most eight tiles. Past that, the eye skips.
- Every number against its own trailing average. $294 per hour means nothing. $294 against a 12-month average of $310 means something.
- Every number opens to its rows. Click the 9% no-show rate and see the 83 appointments. If the tool cannot do this, the number cannot be checked, and it will be wrong one day without anyone knowing.
- The formula is visible. A hover or a footnote with “net production divided by scheduled hours” prevents the monthly argument about what the number means.
- Red means act, not “below target”. A tile that turns red every month teaches people to ignore red.
- Refresh daily, from the practice software, without anyone typing. A dashboard fed by a spreadsheet someone updates on Fridays is a weekly report with colours.
What goes on each one?
Owner
| Tile | Formula | Against |
|---|---|---|
| Net production, month to date | Gross minus contractual adjustments | Same point last month and last year |
| Net collection rate, trailing 90 days | Payments divided by net production | Trailing 12 months |
| Production per scheduled hour, by provider | Net production divided by scheduled hours | Each provider’s own 12-month average |
| AR over 90 days | AR over 90 divided by total AR | Last quarter |
| Unscheduled treatment | Dollars planned, not booked | Last month |
| Case acceptance by patient, by provider | Accepted patients divided by presented | Provider’s own average |
| Non-contractual adjustments | Share of production, by user | Last three months |
| Overdue recall | Count of active patients past due | Last month |
The formulas are explained with worked examples on the dental KPIs page.
Office manager, this morning
- Today’s patients: unconfirmed, balance due, treatment planned and not booked.
- Open time today and tomorrow, in hours, by column.
- Claims over 30 days, count and dollars.
- Yesterday’s day sheet total against yesterday’s deposit.
- New unscheduled plans from yesterday’s exams.
This dashboard is a to-do list with numbers. It is opened at 7:45 and again at lunch.
Hygiene
- Production per scheduled hour, each hygienist, against their own average.
- Pre-booking rate: patients who left with the next visit booked.
- Perio therapy share of visits.
- No-show rate for hygiene columns.
- Open hygiene hours in the next 14 days.
What data does each tile need?
Everything above comes from the practice software, and the tables are known. Completed procedures and adjustments (Open Dental’s procedurelog and adjustment table; Eaglesoft’s transactions_header with type S for services and C or D for adjustments; Dentrix’s admin.adjustment_view). Payments (Eaglesoft types A and P; Dentrix admin.payment_view). Appointments and their status history (Open Dental histappointment; Dentrix admin.appthist; Eaglesoft appointment). Treatment plans, recall records and insurance plans from each system’s own tables. Scheduled hours are the hardest input; see the production per hour page for why.
The one thing a dashboard should not do is write back. Read the tables, calculate, show. A tool that can also edit the schedule or post a payment is a different kind of risk, covered on the read-only integration page.
Spreadsheet or software?
Start with a spreadsheet if you have one person who will pull eight numbers every Monday for three months. That proves which numbers you actually look at. Move to software when the pulling takes longer than the looking, or when you need by-provider and by-day views that a weekly pull cannot give.
What Calibic adds
Dashboards are LIVE, with owner, provider and hygiene views, and custom dashboards you assemble from the same tiles. Calibic reads Open Dental, Dentrix and Eaglesoft read-only (it never changes a record), refreshes every morning, shows each number against its own trailing average with the formula visible, and opens every figure to its source rows. Ask (LIVE) lets you type a question such as “how much treatment is planned but not booked” and get the number with its sources. Where a system does not hold a field, the Coverage page says so instead of estimating.
Next step: see the three layouts above on the dashboards product page.