Hi there,

A few years ago I sat down with the management accounts for our own dental group and the numbers did not match what I had assumed going in. Not by a small margin either. I want to describe the actual afternoon rather than the general idea of it, because the specifics are the part that matters.

I am a chartered accountant. I trained at PwC, and I have spent twenty five years in dental finance. If there is one person in this industry who should have caught what I am about to describe early, it is me.

Here is what I genuinely did not know, in my own group, in my own numbers. Which clinicians were actually profitable once every deduction was properly accounted for. What the recall list we were not chasing was quietly worth in lost revenue. Whether the associate splits we had agreed years before still reflected what those associates were actually bringing in.

I wrote about a version of this back in July, the post about the £100,000 that many dental groups are unknowingly leaking, and a lot of you replied (you can read it here). Some of you recognised your own practice immediately. Some were frustrated nobody had put it this plainly before. I want to go further than that post did, because the honest version of the story is not that I spotted a gap and closed it neatly. The honest version is that finding it took longer than it should have, and it corrected things I had assumed were fine for years.

I am not going to tell you what we did about it, not this week. This email is only the admission, because I suspect most owners carry a version of this same doubt and rarely say it out loud, even to themselves.

So here is what I am actually asking of you. Reply and tell me which number in your own practice you are least sure about. The associate split, the recall value, something else entirely. I read every reply myself, and it genuinely shapes what I write next.

Speak soon,

Arun

On a different note: on 14 October, Smita and I are hosting an evening in Central London called Owner, Not Operator, on building a practice that runs and grows without you in the chair. Seats are capped to keep the room small. Details and tickets are here.