They say
“We ask every new patient how they found us.”
We say
And a good practice records it. This checks that record against collected production and adds the campaign behind it, which the field cannot hold.
For Dentrix
Which campaigns produced treatment that was actually paid for?
Match accepted, completed and collected treatment to the campaigns and calls that produced the patient.
No API key Nothing to install in Dentrix No card required
The gap
A new patient exam is worth a hundred dollars. The implant case they accept four months later is worth four thousand, and nothing credits the advertisement for it.
Dentrix 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
The patient record. Phone is usually the more complete field in a dental practice.
- Needed
Collected production
What was actually collected, not scheduled or accepted. Acceptance and collection diverge, and the divergence is not the same across channels.
- Needed
Procedure or completion date
The date the work was done or paid for, used consistently.
- Optional
Procedure category
Hygiene, restorative, implant, ortho, cosmetic. Enough to separate lines of business without sending clinical detail.
Step by step
Getting the file out of Dentrix.
Written for somebody with Dentrix open in the next tab. Report names vary by edition, so each step says what to look for.
-
Run a production and collections report by patient
One row per patient or per procedure, carrying a contact detail, the collected amount and a date.
-
Cover at least a year
High-value dentistry is decided slowly. A quarter of data captures hygiene and misses implants, which is the opposite of what you want to measure.
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Keep the patient contact column
Phone or email on each row is what makes the file matchable.
-
Export CSV and upload
Mapping is suggested and you confirm it; manual mapping is always available.
-
Add the call and ad exports
Dental demand arrives by phone. A call tracking export, where you have one, is usually the strongest second file.
What comes back
The page Dentrix 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 Dentrix 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.
New patient count is the wrong number and everybody knows it
Dental marketing is sold and measured on new patients. It is countable, it is fast, and it is almost uncorrelated with what a practice earns. A channel that delivers thirty hygiene patients and a channel that delivers eight who accept restorative and implant work look identical on that metric, and are not close on revenue.
The number that matters is collected production per patient, traced back to the channel that produced them. That is a join between the practice management system and the ad or call data, and it is the join nobody makes because the two systems have no reason to talk.
Once made, it typically reorders the channel list. Practices routinely find that their cheapest source of new patients is their most expensive source of revenue.
The implant case accepted four months after the exam
High-value dentistry is a considered purchase. A patient comes in for a cleaning, hears about a crown or an implant, thinks about it, checks their insurance, gets a second opinion and accepts in the next quarter or the one after.
Because the match is on the patient rather than a visit, all of that later production credits the channel that produced them the first time. There is no attribution window and nothing decays: the person in April's enquiry file and the person in September's production file are the same person, so the match is made.
Accepted is not collected, and the gap differs by channel
Treatment plans get accepted and then not scheduled; scheduled and then cancelled; completed and then not paid. If one channel's patients accept enthusiastically and pay poorly, a report built on accepted treatment will rank it first and be wrong.
Exporting collected production is the correction. It also makes the report reconcilable to the practice's own numbers, which is what makes it repeatable in a partners' meeting rather than an interesting one-off.
What the practice sends, and what it does not
A contact detail, an amount and a date. Optionally a procedure category, so hygiene and implants can be judged separately. No clinical notes, no diagnoses, no treatment detail beyond that category — none of it is read by the match and none of it should be in the export.
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, isolated per workspace and deletable in one click, with a DPA available. What rules apply to a particular practice is for that practice and its advisers to determine; we never see your records.
Reactivation is not acquisition, and blending them flatters everything
A recall campaign that brings a lapsed patient back for hygiene is valuable and is not new patient acquisition. If reactivated patients are counted as conversions in the same report as first-time patients, the cost per new patient falls and means nothing.
Separate them at the export with a new-versus-existing column. Acquisition is then judged on genuinely new patients and their production, while reactivation is judged on its own terms — which is usually a much better return and a much smaller ceiling.
Most practices have never seen those two numbers apart, and the ratio between them is one of the more useful things this produces.
Fair questions
“Dentrix already does that.” Not quite.
They say
“Our software is not a marketing tool.”
We say
It does not need to be. If it exports production and collections with a patient contact detail and a date, that is the file.
They say
“Most of our growth is referral.”
We say
Then the report will show that plainly, and you will be able to size the paid budget against it instead of guessing.
Production and collections by patient: a phone or email, the collected amount, and a date.
Collected. Acceptance-to-collection differs by channel and hides the difference.
Yes, with a procedure category column — it is the most useful cut on this report.
At least twelve months, because high-value cases are accepted slowly.
No. A contact detail, an amount, a date, and optionally a procedure category.
Not required, but dental enquiries are overwhelmingly phone calls, so it is the strongest second file.
Yes, with a location column, on Growth and above.
Yes, and it credits the channel that produced the patient originally.
No. This works from a CSV export.
Encrypted in transit and at rest, isolated per workspace, deletable in one click, DPA available.
Yes, with a new-versus-existing column. Blending them makes cost per new patient meaningless.
They appear with the production they generated, which may be only an exam. That is the honest figure for that channel.
Many, as payments against the patient. That way the revenue credits the original channel as it is actually collected.
Yes, if you export both presented and collected treatment. The gap between them differs sharply by source.
Upload a referral list as a source file and it ranks on collected production beside paid channels.
By trade
Trades that run Dentrix.
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 Tebra (Kareo) Independent practices, formerly on Kareo Closed-sales file What to export Closed-sales file athenahealth Medical groups Closed-sales file What to export Lead and call file CallRail Businesses whose sales close on the phone Lead and call file What to export
All 20 systems 
Dentrix 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 Dentrix, no API key, and no need to have been tracking anything until now. Last year works as well as this month.