As a dental practice owner, you’ve invested in building your practice and serving your community. Your commitment to providing quality care is clear in every aspect of your practice – from your equipment to your highly trained staff. But here’s a question worth considering: are you giving your practice’s financial health the same level of attention as your patients’ dental health?
Waiting weeks for financial reports isn’t just inconvenient. It’s potentially limiting your practice’s growth potential. Think of it this way: you wouldn’t diagnose a patient without current x-rays and a comprehensive exam. Similarly, making business decisions without immediate access to your financial data is like practicing dentistry blindfolded.
Understanding Your Practice’s Vital Signs
Your financial data tells a crucial story about your practice’s financial health. When you can check these metrics in real-time, you can spot concerning trends before they affect your bottom line. Perhaps your collections are lagging because of a new insurance verification process, or maybe there’s an opportunity to enhance your front desk team’s training. Without immediate visibility, these issues can persist for months, quietly eroding your profitability.
Complete Financial Statements Are Non-Negotiable
A concerning trend we’re seeing among dental practices is working with accounting firms that don’t regularly prepare complete financial statements. Just as you wouldn’t diagnose a patient’s oral health with only partial information, you can’t properly assess your practice’s financial health without both a balance sheet and an income statement.
Your income statement shows your practice’s profitability over a specific period, but that’s only half the picture. Your balance sheet reveals your overall financial position—including assets, liabilities, and equity—at a specific point in time. Without this crucial document, you’re missing critical indicators of your practice’s long-term sustainability and financial health. We recently onboarded a client who was shocked to discover their previous dental specialist CPA firm hadn’t been providing regular balance sheets, leaving them with dangerously incomplete financial visibility.
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10 Questions to Ask Your Dental CPA: A Guide to Evaluating Your Financial Partnership
Building on Your Practice’s Growth Potential
Growth in today’s dental industry requires more than just adding patients or procedures. It demands smart financial planning and clear visibility into your opportunities. Whether you’re considering bringing on associates, expanding your location, or investing in new technology, these decisions should be backed by solid financial insights and expert guidance. Many practices find themselves handicapped in their growth journey because they’re operating with limited financial visibility and delayed insights from their accounting team.
The path to sustainable growth starts with having the right financial partnership. When you have real-time access to your practice’s financial data and a responsive advisory team, you can confidently evaluate opportunities as they arise. This might mean seizing the perfect moment to invest in new equipment, understanding the financial implications of expanding your service offerings, or having the documentation ready when it’s time to pursue financing for growth.
Think about your growth goals for the next five years. Are you looking to add locations? Bring in associates? Expand your service offerings? Each of these paths requires careful financial planning and timing. Working with a financial partner who understands both the dental industry and modern financial tools ensures you’re making decisions based on solid data, not just gut feelings or industry trends.
The Hidden Costs of “Budget” Financial Services
When operating with delayed financial insights you’re losing time and missing opportunities. Those overlooked tax planning strategies could have saved you thousands. The hours spent grappling with obsolete systems and waiting for basic financial reports represent time better spent with patients or developing your practice. Factor in the higher borrowing costs from poor financial documentation when you’re ready to expand, and that monthly “savings” transforms into a significant expense.
Choosing a True Financial Partner for Your Practice
In the rapidly evolving dental industry, your CPA or financial advisory team should be more than number crunchers. They should be partners invested in your practice’s growth and success. Think about it: would you want your patients to wait days or weeks for treatment when they’re in pain? Similarly, waiting extended periods for responses to crucial financial questions can actively harm your practice’s health.
A true financial partner like Rea understands that your success depends on both responsive service and proactive guidance. This means having someone who responds to urgent inquiries within hours, not weeks. It means working with advisors who don’t just react to problems but help identify and address potential issues before they impact your bottom line. Most importantly, it means having a team that combines deep dental industry knowledge with modern technology to offer the insights you need, when you need them.
Ready to experience what a true financial partnership looks like? Let’s have a conversation about building your practice’s financial future. Our dental advisory team combines industry knowledge with innovative technology to help practices like yours thrive in a competitive industry.
