They say
“Our new patient numbers are already tracked.”
We say
They are, and they are the wrong number. Two channels with the same new patient count can differ by a factor of five in production accepted.
For Curve Dental
A new patient exam is ninety pounds. The treatment plan they accept is four thousand.
Export collected production from Curve, upload the enquiries beside them, and rank marketing on what patients actually paid for.
No API key Nothing to install in Curve DentalNothing to install No card requiredNo card
CloseRev reads a Curve Dental export of collected production — the patient's phone or email, the amount collected and the procedure date — and matches it against the calls and forms that produced the booking. For a practice the gap between a booked hygiene appointment and accepted treatment is the whole question, and it is the half advertising reporting never sees. Production with no matching enquiry is reported as Direct / Unknown.
Last checked against Curve Dental's own documentation on September 24, 2026.
The gap
You can see new patient numbers rising. Whether those patients accept treatment, and which marketing brought the ones who do, is guesswork.
Curve Dental sees
What was sold, to whom, and for how much.
no shared row
Your ad account sees
The click, the keyword, the call, and what each one cost.
The file
What the export needs in it.
Three things carry the match: who, how much, and when. Anything else is optional and only changes how the report can be sliced.
- Needed
Patient phone or email
On the patient record. Dental enquiries arrive by phone more often than any other health category, so the number carries most of the matching.
- Needed
Collected production
What was collected rather than what was presented or scheduled. Presented treatment is a plan; collected production is revenue.
- Needed
Procedure or payment date
When the work was done or paid for. Treatment plans are often phased over months, so a wide window matters.
- Optional
Procedure category
Hygiene, restorative, implants, orthodontics, cosmetic. It is the split that separates a channel bringing cleanings from one bringing full-arch cases.
Step by step
Getting the file out of Curve Dental.
Written for somebody with Curve Dental open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Export collected production
One row per procedure or payment with a patient contact detail, the amount collected and a date. Look for the export listing production with what was collected against it.
-
Use collected, not presented or scheduled
Presented treatment measures your treatment planning and scheduled treatment measures your front desk. Neither measures marketing, and both are much larger numbers.
-
Export your enquiries
Call tracking is the important one in dentistry, plus the website form, any booking widget and directory or membership plan listings.
-
Cover at least a year
A new patient exam in January becomes accepted implant treatment in June. A short window measures the exam and misses the case.
-
Upload both
The join runs on the phone and the email, normalised, with first visits and subsequent production reported apart.
What comes back
The page Curve Dental cannot show you.
Revenue by channel, the count of sales behind each figure, and an honest bucket for the ones nobody could trace. Sample figures, from the worked example on the Dentists page — not from a Curve Dental account.
Traced to a channel$207,00068% of $304,400
Sales matched83 of 129high confidence only
Average sale$2,340per paid sale
| Channel | Share | Sales | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 38 | $124,800 | |
| Meta Ads | 31 | $54,800 | |
| Email marketing | 14 | $27,400 | |
| Direct / Unknown | 46 | $97,400 |
Unmatched sales stay in Direct / Unknown. They are never spread across the paid channels to make the total look better.
The argument
What changes when the treatment and the ad share a row.
The exam is the loss leader and the case is the business
Most practices advertise a new patient exam at or below cost, deliberately, because the point of it is diagnosis and treatment acceptance.
That makes the first transaction the worst possible basis for judging a channel. Two sources delivering identical numbers of new patient exams can differ enormously in the production those patients go on to accept.
Only a file that follows the patient past the exam separates them, and in dentistry the separation is usually dramatic — which is why case acceptance, not new patient count, is the number practices should be buying against.
Treatment acceptance varies by channel and nobody measures it that way
Acceptance is treated as a clinical and communication skill, which it largely is. It is also a property of who walks through the door.
A patient who searched for an emergency, one who came for a discounted whitening offer and one referred by their neighbour arrive with completely different readiness to accept a plan.
With both files uploaded the report gives production per new patient by channel, which is the closest thing to acceptance-by-source a practice can get. It frequently reorders channels that looked identical on cost per new patient.
Hygiene recall is revenue and it is not this month's marketing
A healthy practice runs on recall, and the hygiene column is full every month regardless of what the advertising did.
Counted together with new patients, recall production swamps the acquisition signal entirely and makes every channel look ineffective.
Reported apart, recall becomes the retention measure it actually is, and the acquisition channels can be judged on the patients they brought. Whether a channel's patients stay for recall is itself one of the more valuable things the report shows.
It is also the number that decides whether a channel is worth buying more of. A patient who attends recall for three years is worth several times a patient who takes one exam and disappears, and the difference between those two outcomes is visible in the file long before it is visible in the bank.
Membership plans and financing change when the money appears
In-house membership plans bill monthly and third-party financing pays the practice at once while the patient pays over years.
Both break a naive match on payment date: one spreads a patient across many small rows, the other lands the whole case value on a single day well after the decision.
The report sums by patient, so a case is a case however it was paid for. Where the export flags plan or financed treatment, keeping it lets you read the two apart rather than wondering why one month looks extraordinary.
Fair questions
“Curve Dental already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Treatment acceptance is about our team, not our marketing.”
We say
Largely, and partly about who arrives. This separates the two rather than assuming either.
They say
“We cannot export patient information.”
We say
A contact detail, an amount and a date. No chart, no imaging, no treatment plan, no insurance detail.
No. It reads a file you exported, so your charts and imaging are never reachable — no connection to them exists.
Collected production with a patient contact detail, the amount and a date.
Collected. Presented measures your treatment planning and scheduled measures your front desk; neither measures marketing.
A year at least. A new patient exam becomes accepted treatment months later, and that is the revenue worth attributing.
Yes, where the export carries a procedure category — and it is the split that makes the report readable.
Yes, with both files. It is the closest thing to treatment acceptance by source and it usually reorders the channels.
Summed by patient, so a plan member is one patient rather than twelve small payments.
The practice was paid, so it counts as collected on the date you were paid. Flag it if the export allows and read it apart.
They are reported as Direct / Unknown and never matched on a name.
Yes, where the export carries one. A group average usually describes none of its practices.
A contact detail, an amount and a date, plus a procedure category if you include one. No chart, no imaging, no treatment plan, no insurance detail. Encrypted in transit and at rest and deleted with the import.
Collected production by channel, new patients separated from recall, and everything unmatched kept visible.
By trade
Trades that run Curve Dental.
What the report looks like once the export is in, written for each one.
Other systems
Also worth reading.
Running more than one system, or comparing? The method is the same and the columns are not.
Closed-sales file Dentrix Dental practices Closed-sales file What to export Lead and call file Solutionreach Dental and medical practices Lead and call file What to export Closed-sales file Tebra (Kareo) Independent practices, formerly on Kareo Closed-sales file What to export
All 97 systems 
Curve Dental and the other product names and logos on this page belong to their owners and are shown to identify the software a file comes from. CloseRev is not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and connects to none of them: it reads a file you export.
Start today
Two exports, and you will know.
Nothing to install in Curve Dental, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.