Dental A Team with Kiera Dent
Dental A Team with Kiera Dent
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Dental A Team

Do This Monthly To Protect Practice Profit

Do This Monthly To Protect Practice Profit

9/15/2026 10:51:00 AM   |   Comments: 0   |   Views: 41
Tiff and Kristy break down monthly financial controls that protect your practice’s profit. These include identifying lag and lead measures, getting your supplies in check, creating a budget around the team’s fun money, and more.

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Transcript:

Tiffanie (00:01)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. Welcome back to the Dental A Team podcast. I am your host today, Tiffanie, and I am so excited to have Miss Kristy here with me. Kristy, you have been with us for quite some time. We have done a lot of podcasts together. and I truly love and appreciate your willingness to jump on. You just came from a coaching call, so thank you for hopping over here to me. I know your brain's a little busy with

 

Notes and getting everything wrapped up. We do a lot for our clients. So I know Kristy, you just spent an hour with a team or or doctor, and next steps are making sure your notes are wrapped up and you get a nice little email over to them and that's what our clients come to expect. So Kristy, how are you today? Thank you for serving our clients in coaching calls and serving our clients and our audience here on the podcast today. How are you?

 

DAT- Kristy (00:55)

I'm doing good. Happy to be here with you.

 

Tiffanie (00:58)

Awesome, thank you. And this guys is why I normally schedule them on Mondays and I am just feverishly working to get ahead. And Kristy graciously accepted my Tuesday invite to come podcast with me. So thank you, Kristy. Kristy, I know I always say this, I kind of handpick different podcast topics to make it the most fun for you ladies while you're here with me. So I get to talk about all of the pieces and I

 

Pick things that I think you guys are gonna enjoy the most. I think all of you, all of us consultants could speak to all of the topics that we have, but we all kind of gear towards favorites and things we love, things we do a lot of. And something that you do a lot of is you look for the money and finding it seems to be something that you enjoy, but also something you're just really, really good at. I know Kira speaks to that often as well. And today I wanted to talk a little bit more in-depth.

 

on profit because I know we talk we've spoken a lot on a lot of different podcasts about AR, bringing AR down, kind of how to find those controls within the practice, but making sure we're looking at monthly financial controls that protect the practice profit was something I wanted to chat with you about today. So how's that sound Kristy? Sound awesome. Awesome. Good. Let's

 

DAT- Kristy (02:16)

Sounds like a plan. Let's find the money.

 

Tiffanie (02:20)

find the money. So one thing I love that we like to do with our clients

 

And

 

something we do, I think, in our personal lives too is control what we can and then, you know, leave the rest for later. We we fix the rest later, we work on the rest later. And something that we can control is how much of our profit is being spent to a certain extent. So there's different spaces within the PL, within the practice spending that we do have control over that I think we don't spend enough time projecting and looking at to be able to know.

 

that we are profitable or that we can create that profit. And to me, when I see a topic that says monthly financial controls that protect practice profit, I think of budgeting. I think making sure we're working with it as a means of what we already have so that we're not overextending ourselves just like we do in our personal lives. So Kristy, you work with practices within their finances and their profit a lot. What are some areas that you work specifically on

 

helping them to protect their profit within those numbers.

 

DAT- Kristy (03:28)

Yeah. Well, I think it's important, Tiff, that we look at it routinely, number one, and understand what our fixed expenses are and then what are ones that we can actually maybe pull levers and see where we can budget and plan for. so many things. Again, just like we look at numbers inside of the practice, there's lag and lead measures, right?

 

I kind of look at the PL the same way. There's lag and lead measures. And so sometimes it's just being more proactive and really looking and planning ahead versus reactive and looking at the bank account to go, is there money?

 

Tiffanie (04:11)

Yeah, which I think we all do that at some point, right? Personally

 

DAT- Kristy (04:14)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (04:15)

and professionally. When you're looking at a PL, I love that lead measure, lag measure. PLs are full of lag measures and doctors will look back and gosh, I have a practice that only gets them quarterly, and I'm like, I don't know how we do this. Like it's so hard. We've got to be looking at these every month, like you said. So we're looking at those like lag measures. How do you pulse within that?

 

those lead measures. What are you using and what are you seeing as lead measures when you're looking at those numbers monthly?

 

DAT- Kristy (04:42)

Yeah, well, number one, we might be planning ahead for hiring a new teammate. What is that gonna cost us? And so wrapping that into our budgeting for the month, or maybe there's a new piece of equipment that we're looking to buy or a CE course we're going to, like looking ahead and planning for those expenses on a monthly basis so they're not a surprise to us when when they do hit.

 

Tiffanie (05:09)

That's brilliant. I love that. So making sure even if we know, hey, we're gonna try to bring on an associate this year. So that associate cost, a lot of dentists know look at the associate costs and start, you know, planning for thirty percent goes over here or twenty percent or whatever you're gonna do, goes over here, start putting that aside. But to your point, Kristy, for

 

Hiring, something that I think we fail to think about often when we bring on an associate is the rest of the team that may need to be brought on as well. So do we need more dental assistance for the associate? Do we need another treatment coordinator to work that schedule? Sometimes, even Kristy, there's hygiene, right? There's a hygiene hire that needs to come along with that associate. So it sounds like for you, you're looking at with that practice, okay, this is our current lag measure. This is our current what we can say is.

 

our usual and customary employee cost. And then as we add these other additional team members, we can expect that employee cost to become X dollars. And then turning that into being able to see what the what the production and collections costs need to be in order to cover that volume.

 

DAT- Kristy (06:19)

Yeah, you got it, tips spot on. And we can almost do that for anything that we're future pacing and planning, right? To see if it makes

 

Tiffanie (06:27)

Yeah.

 

DAT- Kristy (06:28)

sense even.

 

Tiffanie (06:29)

Yeah. And I as you're seeing as you're saying that too, you said planning for a a large equipment purchase. So with that, then you can look and say, okay, well, this is what our profit is or what we project our profit to be in the next coming months. Can we set aside or how much can we set aside out of that profit each month to be able to afford that large purchase rather than vice versa? I think a lot of practices

 

And people we say, I want or I need this, and they offer low percentage rates or no percentage rates. So instead of saving towards that thing this day and age, we just say, cool, let's get it, and I'll pay monthly to pay it off. So you're you're even thinking potentially flipping that mindset and saying, let's let's project and see when do we need to make this purchase? How much will it be? And how can we get the money for it?

 

DAT- Kristy (07:24)

Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes we do need to finance it, but also knowing what that's gonna look like too. I mean, maybe that makes more sense. Yeah,

 

Tiffanie (07:33)

Yeah.

 

DAT- Kristy (07:34)

agree with you, Tip. We need to kind of look at where our expenses have been, especially like with team, it's easy to look p back at the last 12 months or six months and say, this is where we've been running. You know, what's kind of funny about that is we just came off of a month where many of our clients had three payrolls.

 

And being able to budget for those ahead of time, right? So

 

Tiffanie (07:56)

Yeah.

 

DAT- Kristy (07:57)

planning ahead and knowing what we're looking at, but you have to be looking at it routinely.

 

Tiffanie (08:03)

Absolutely.

 

I totally agree with that. Quarterly, yearly does not, it just doesn't work. It does not, you're left in the dark so much. monthly financial control. So we can project, we can look and see, okay, where's our growth taking us? Do we need to prep and plan for any expenses? And I love your like even adding if we're adding debt, what does that added debt look like against the current PL? And then two.

 

I was thinking earlier about this, like what pieces do we use a lag measure for to like pull into this month for, like you said, a lead and a lag. So I know a lot of practices I have them working off of budgets, like to the max. And so I have obviously I think a lot of practices work off of an ordering budget, so a supply budget for the back office.

 

But I know a lot of them are like a little skewy too. They're kind of all over the place. Or they're like, it's fine. We're $3,000 over. And I'm like, $3,000 is like another percent or two sometimes. So making sure we stay in line with that, but projecting that and putting it on spreadsheets, right? So I have practices that have budgeting spreadsheets for that reason. So they know exactly how much money they have to spend. And I have dental assistants that find

 

that to be like a game. Like that inspires them to go find the best deals because they know they only have X amount of dollars because the spreadsheet told them and then they're entering all that data. What are you seeing outside of supply costs that you've got offices? I know I've got, you know, if you're doing some obscure things, like what are you having practices look at or have you in the past trying to gain that control maybe of their profit within the budgeting world outside of just the normal dental supplies?

 

DAT- Kristy (09:52)

Yeah, I love that you mentioned the dental supplies and doctors, if you're not letting your team do this, like do it. And and really I liken that Tiff to going to the grocery store without a list or with a list, right? Be

 

Tiffanie (10:05)

Mm. Yeah.

 

DAT- Kristy (10:06)

very intentional. And I really like to have my offices ordering twice a month and you

 

Tiffanie (10:12)

Mm-hmm.

 

DAT- Kristy (10:12)

set the time aside, you know, Wednesday the first week of the month and Wednesday the third week of the month or something similar.

 

So to your point there, but also the other things that I would look at, and it's coming up big right now, especially with insurances. How much are you spending? Are you taking the credit card payments and letting another 4% go out the door? You know, so many docs are complaining about their reimbursements, but yet you're allowing them to pay you with credit card. You know, that's

 

Tiffanie (10:41)

Yeah.

 

DAT- Kristy (10:42)

a big one that could save you.

 

Look at look at those. Hopefully you're entering the payments in your software and you're designating it to a payment type. Run that report and see what what how much did you take in on credit card insurance payments? And pretty much you might as well times it by four percent, you know, and see what you could

 

Tiffanie (11:02)

Yeah, yeah.

 

DAT- Kristy (11:03)

be saving. That's a huge one right now.

 

Tiffanie (11:06)

Yeah, I completely agree with you. That's massive. And a lot of practices are doing credit card payments for supplies in order to get points. And then they pay off the credit card. But I do see often practices that end up and we all do that, we do this in our personal life too. We're like, I'll get the points. But then when the payment rolls on, we're like, shoot, I didn't plan for that. So now we're paying it over time and we are adding that extra whatever percentage that APR might be per month to that pay to that balance.

 

DAT- Kristy (11:35)

Yeah. The other thing when you're talking supplies tip back in our day, we had to wait for things to come in, right? Now, truly, yeah. Now,

 

Tiffanie (11:42)

Yeah, weeks.

 

DAT- Kristy (11:44)

truly, most practices, they're getting it within a day or two. I I just I challenge you to reframe your mindset. Sometimes the salesperson comes in and they're like, buy three, get two free, or whatever, you know. It's like that's money sitting on your shelf. And many times, even if you

 

think you're gonna use it over time, that money could be worth more to you in the bank than sitting on the shelf.

 

Tiffanie (12:10)

Yeah,

 

that's a really good point. And I was thinking too as you were speaking, there's so many different areas of that like quick return. I have an office that we've dug into their finances many times and their supplies are just like out of this world. And I'm like, what the heck? They were up to like 15% one month. And I was like, guys, what are you ordering? Like what is are we remodeling? Are we restocking the entire office? Like, what did we order?

 

And when they went back, they're like, I don't know. So they go back through and we have them on budget spreadsheets, right? Well, they go back through, and what was happening is the office manager and the front office gal were every day like, we need toilet paper. we need, and they have prime. So prime is a phenomenal tool, very dangerous tool, right? It's dangerous in my own home.

 

DAT- Kristy (13:04)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (13:06)

So being able to at the click of a button get something tomorrow or sometimes even the same day because you need it, it's very easy to just keep that open and be like, order this, order this, order this. And the next thing you know, you've spent two, three, four times your budget because you're not paying attention to it being all lumped together. So I love your ordering two times a month on the budget because it avoids that, even if you have an Amazon cart full, right? I tell them that's fine.

 

Put it in the Amazon cart. If that's how you want to roll, put it in the Amazon cart and you press order on the order day and you see your total. Because how many times have we gone? I used to do this and I probably should do it again. I would throw stuff in the Amazon cart and then I'd wait a couple days. And if I remembered that I needed the thing, I'd go back and I'd order it.

 

DAT- Kristy (13:55)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (13:56)

Or I'd sometimes go back in and be like, I don't know why I thought I needed that. There are so many things that I did not end up ordering.

 

Because I just sat on it for a couple of days. So if we do that instead of the quick instant gratification, because to your point, no matter when you order, it's gonna be there in a couple days. It used to take weeks. It used to take like a month to get implant supplies. We had to schedule implants six to eight weeks out just to ensure we had the parts and the rep would still have to bring stuff. But it's not like

 

DAT- Kristy (14:25)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (14:26)

that anymore. Like there's zero competition when it comes to shipping rates, remember, or shipping

 

shipping days. Remember Henry Schein was like, we'll get it to you within the within the week, free shipping. And it

 

DAT- Kristy (14:36)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (14:37)

was like, yes, I'm using you because you have that, but now everybody has it. So I love that you mentioned that.

 

DAT- Kristy (14:42)

Yeah. I love that you said the

 

implant thing, Tiff, because I know even back in my day it was like, gosh, it's not here, and Doctor would spend seventy-five dollars to overnight it and I'm just looking at it like, man.

 

Tiffanie (14:54)

Yep.

 

DAT- Kristy (14:55)

So I hope that you guys are separating out your invoices and you're really scrutinizing those truly. Tiff, you know, when

 

Tiffanie (15:00)

Yeah. I agree.

 

DAT- Kristy (15:02)

you were talking, one of the other ones that's really hit me hard lately is ink and and heaven forbid, guys, if you still have the Pitney Bows.

 

postage machine. I challenge you to get rid of it yesterday because truly in this day and age with text to pay and I hope you're not sending postcards anymore and I hope you're not sending paper statements like the ink and the postage is just outrageous and what you're paying for those machines. Get get on, use your technology. We all have it.

 

Tiffanie (15:37)

I

 

agree. I loved my Pitney Bows machine when I was in office. That was a long time ago. But I was obsessed with that machine because it was so handy. But I think to your point now, even s paper statements I think are done online and a company prints it and ship and sends it. So we don't even like print at the office and touch them anymore. It's literally all done online. So yes, get rid of the Pitney Bows. I know they're really cute.

 

And they're super helpful. I was attached to mine, but we all gotta say goodbye at some point. I love that.

 

DAT- Kristy (16:10)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (16:12)

another area that I've seen practices like forget that they spent on is like team fun budgeting. So I just you know got my team Starbucks three, four, five times. Like I've walked into an office, I have a couple offices that do this. And if I come to your office, yes, I do enjoy this, so by all means create a budget around it.

 

I'll walk in and they're like, hey, we're putting a Starbucks order in, Tiff. What do you want? And I'm like, heck yeah, right? So I get on there and it's DoorDash or Uber Eats or whatever app that's gonna deliver to the office. And I'm like, bro, this is like $125 worth of Starbucks. Like that's I know I refill my app way too often and I need a budget for that, but those types of things go unnoticed. Again, because everything's just it's not cash, we're not seeing it, it's auto online.

 

And it's like right now. So I have a lot of practices. My practice actually with the Amazon situation, they have an Amazon bucket, but then they also have a team fund bucket. And so they

 

DAT- Kristy (17:15)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (17:15)

have a budget every month of you know profit and amount of profit that goes over to their team fund bucket and they use it or they bank it. And so they can get future items. But that was something that we had to create for that practice because their profit

 

was just getting eaten up because the office manager's like, well, she needed new shoes, you know? Like it's it's uniform, I'll yeah, it's not part of your uniform allowance though. So it was just like this weird spending habits. Are you seeing things like that too, where it's just these like one off yes team appreciation, but we're when we're not budgeting for it, that's where we get confused on the P and L.

 

DAT- Kristy (17:55)

Yeah. I th I think it's funny in listening to you talk. It's so funny how it mirrors our personal life. And again, you think about going to the grocery store. If I don't have a budget, all of a sudden, I mean, think of Costco. We walk out and it's like, man, that hurt. But if we have our

 

Tiffanie (18:11)

Yes today.

 

DAT- Kristy (18:12)

list and our budget that we're sticking in, we leave and and we know about what it's gonna be. So to your point, we love team fun, right? We love celebrating and doing that stuff, but

 

Yeah, have your budget and and even more so than that, like have your budget and let your team plan it. You know, let them

 

Tiffanie (18:31)

Yeah.

 

DAT- Kristy (18:31)

have fun with it. But but definitely know where you're spending and know what the budget is for it.

 

Tiffanie (18:40)

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I actually have an office that just started a new kind of like a a kudos board, if you will, right? It's a big board and they write these kudos up there. They put the the post it sticky notes up there with so and so's name. And what they do now, instead of it being like this person got five, she gets a gift card or whatever, or we pulled her name, she gets a gift card, or he gets this. What the office manager decided to do was count up

 

all of the praise that's on the board at the end of the month and the number of sticky notes that she has for each one it's a dollar and then one but she has a rotating schedule so then someone is responsible for taking that pool of money and going and getting something fun for the team. And so

 

DAT- Kristy (19:28)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (19:29)

it could be a hundred dollars because they put a hundred sticky notes up there. She has she has no idea she just put the sticky notes up there and then they get that budget amount and they go

 

get lip glosses for the team or lunch or something with that money. And I just I thought that was really cool. But what she did was she budgeted that, right? She's like, okay, well we know what our profit is. And if I have a team allowance of X amount of dollars every month, it might roll over some months, may need more, et cetera. But she's created that budget around it as well.

 

DAT- Kristy (20:01)

Yeah, I love that. It it's it serves so many purposes, right? Keeping the culture alive, celebrating. They could even make it around core values, but also having that budget and it gives teams something to look forward to celebrating too. So

 

Tiffanie (20:17)

Yeah,

 

I agree. And give them a reason to put sticky notes up there. I'm like, heck, I'd

 

DAT- Kristy (20:20)

Yeah.

 

Tiffanie (20:20)

be up there all day putting sticky notes up there. You'd have to create a whole new budget.

 

But go ahead.

 

DAT- Kristy (20:25)

Yeah. Tiff, you mentioned

 

something else. You know, a lot of us have subscriptions or apps that we're using. I think

 

Tiffanie (20:32)

Yeah.

 

DAT- Kristy (20:32)

those at least quarterly, it's worth taking a look at and just seeing, are we using this anymore or not? I mean, yeah, dues and subscriptions is a big area for looking for some leaks there.

 

Tiffanie (20:48)

I totally agree. I totally agree. I know I I tell myself if it's an app or if it's a subscription that you don't want to look at, you probably need to look at it. So my Starbucks app that's very easy to be like, add 25 real quick, or I I usually add 15 or 20, but the other day it was like the 25 said get an extra star, right? And I was like, cool. What's I'm gonna add it anyways, start adding 25, start adding 30. And when you look back to see how many times you just

 

added whatever to that app to be able to buy from that store. And when I look and I'm like, would I have bought $125 worth of Starbucks if I were using cash? Probably not. Probably not. But it's so simple to add it to the app and spend. And that's their business, that's the whole business model. And it works and it's phenomenal. But when we're looking at monthly financial controls, I think that's a huge space, Kristy.

 

that we forget about, like how much are we paying for these subscriptions? And realistically, Prime, if you're not using the TV, you know, the movies, the TV shows, the whatever music, all of these other pieces, the Audible that comes with it. Like if you're not using those pieces, we're only using it for shipping, to your point earlier.

 

I don't know if you guys have checked this or not. I love Amazon. I'm not here to say don't use them or don't subscribe. I'm not here to say that. So Amazon don't come after us, but the shipping's like two or three days more than what it was going to be. And it really just makes you stop and think. So for your practices where you're off your your team members are just like click, click, click, it's really easy way. Those are really easy ways to your point, Kristy, to take a look at what are we actually spending.

 

And like you said, those are our monthly financial controls, controlling when we're ordering, how we're ordering, and how much our budget is in any perspective of the practice applies or not, really are those financial controls.

 

DAT- Kristy (22:52)

Yeah, I agree with you so much, Tiff. So take a look inside. It's not just the health of the practice inside. It's also looking at the health of the practice from the outward perspective too. And planning, right? Plan for

 

Tiffanie (23:04)

Yes.

 

DAT- Kristy (23:04)

it.

 

Tiffanie (23:05)

Yes. The planning is huge. If you're not planning, you're not budgeting, please by all means do it. And if you're here saying, I feel like it's sometimes like the blocked scheduling conversation, Kristy, where they're like, Well, I can't budget because I'm overspending and I know that. Like, no, still budget and look at how much you're overspending. You should still be saying five percent of last month's collections would be this amount to order supplies. And if you're ordering

 

Eight, nine, or ten percent of supplies because you're building, cool. Still be in the habit of budgeting, just like block scheduling. Well, Kristy, I can't do block scheduling because I just need patience on the schedule, and we've just started. Okay, but what if what if you put it on there and you got used to it while you're building? Same thing with the budget. Like just because you're spending more than what you should be.

 

Because maybe you need to right now doesn't mean you can't build the habit of at least looking at it and knowing what it should be.

 

DAT- Kristy (24:09)

I agree with you a thousand percent because even if we say five percent, if you're at eight right now and you come in at six or seven, it's still over five, but we're gonna it adds up, right? And you're gonna be pleasantly

 

Tiffanie (24:20)

A massive savings.

 

DAT- Kristy (24:21)

surprised at the end. So yeah.

 

Tiffanie (24:24)

Agreed.

 

Yeah, agreed. I love it. All right, action items. I love your perspective, Kristy, what you said looking at the PL's monthly and looking for the lag measures, which is everything a PL is, and the lead measures that are within that because they're there no matter what, your lead measures are in there as well. So take a look where are you budgeting, where are you not budgeting, and where are you off budget when you are budgeting? I think those are the three key pieces and look at the PL monthly.

 

Kristy, I knew this would be a really good one for us to ping and pong off of. Thank you so much for your words of wisdom and for being willing to jump in with me in the middle of your coaching call day.

 

DAT- Kristy (25:04)

Absolutely, it's a pleasure.

 

Tiffanie (25:06)

Awesome. All right, guys, go take a look at your PNLs. If you need help deciphering any of it, if you need help like putting it together, I know a lot of practices come to us and say, hey, I can't read this because it's confusing and my CPA now does it differently than my CPA before. Well, guess what? You have all the tools at your disposal to ask your CPA for what you want. So reach out to Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and we are happy to help you get all of that in order, learn how to read the PNL, do all of the pieces and budget.

 

We are happy, happy, happy to help and leave us a five-star review. Let us know what you thought of this podcast and any tips or tricks you may have for others and any nuggets you took away from us. And just like always, we will catch you next time.
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