As a leader in the dental procurement industry, we often talk about the importance of filling leaky buckets. After all, what good is a purchasing strategy if you can’t keep track of where your money is going?

Following staffing costs, supplies are typically the next largest expense at dental practices. But while accounting for predictable costs like staff compensation is a simple and straightforward task, keeping track of variable expenses in your dental office budget can present a challenge. 

Dental inventory needs and order volume fluctuates from month to month, resulting in imbalances that can be difficult to track if you are still using manual budget spreadsheets. Add in the variability of supply costs when renegotiating vendor contracts and it’s easy to see how many practice owners struggle to get a quick and reliable pulse on their supply expenses for their annual operating budget.

Fortunately, dental budget software is keeping up with the increasing complexity of dental support organizations (DSOs) and their dental procurement lifecycle. Read below for everything you need to know about controlling spend with dental practice budgets.

Dental practice budgets for supply expenses

Wherever there’s a lot of spending, there’s a tremendous opportunity for savings. Look no further than procurement, where supply expenses run anywhere from 5-6% cost of revenue at the average 50+ office dental organization to as high as 10% at organizations with 1-5 offices. 

In order to efficiently manage spend, you need to set budgets that accurately reflect your expenses and drive better decision making. Among other benefits, dental office budgets can help:

• Implement a purchasing strategy that determines what you can and cannot afford based on your business budget goals.
• Prevent overspending by setting budget alerts that notify you when a purchase order goes over a certain spending threshold.
• Gain real-time insights into past and current spend so that you can make better purchasing decisions.
• Get transparency into your procurement team’s finances and assess their true value creation for your organization.
• Deliver accurate financial reporting quickly and easily.

For these reasons and more, it’s no surprise that the biggest and fastest growing DSOs are turning to budget controls to help boost their EBITDA through proactive spend management.

Finding the best dental budget software

If you’re looking for a dental office budget solution that helps control overspending while improving visibility, it’s important to know the different best-in-class features that are available.

Central Dashboard for Budget Visibility

Rather than keeping track of lengthy dental practice budget spreadsheets, upgrade to a platform that displays all of your office budgets in one single location. From a centralized budgets dashboard you can access, view, and manage budgets for every dental practice in your organization quickly and conveniently.

Custom Dental Office Budgets

With custom dental office budgets, you can choose how you monitor your dental practice expenses. Set multiple budgets per office, per month, and track spend all the way down to the location, vendor, product, or specialty level. Custom budget features put you in control, giving you the flexibility to design a spend management program that’s tailored to your long-term goals.

Bulk Importing Dental Office Budgets

Say goodbye to bulky office spreadsheets and hello to bulk importing. With dental procurement software, adjusting budgets from month to month has never been easier – just download and import each dental practice budget at the click of a button. 

Improving the dental practice budget experience

Dental practice budget worksheets are time-intensive to maintain, prone to human error, and inefficiently connected to your purchasing activity. An all-in-one dental procurement platform solves this problem with a simple integration between purchasing and budget management, ensuring that no business expense goes missing. As more and more dental organizations look to automated budget controls to rein in rogue spending, they’re finding a winning solution in procurement software that closes the gaps throughout the dental practice budget process.

Interested in learning more about dental budget capabilities with CureMint? Reach out today for a free demo.