Category: Dental CPA Blog

  You probably heard about the tax and spending bill that Congress passed in December 2019. One of the biggest components of it is set to dramatically change retirement planning, and dentists should be paying attention. The deadline to fund an IRA with retroactive contributions is April 15, and with the SECURE Act in mind,…Read More→

  For anyone who’s not an accountant, and even some who are, organizing financials is tedious. In a dental practice, you have to properly code expenses, assign billing categories, and produce timely financial reports all on top of running a practice. Here are some suggestions for how dental practices can become better organized, more efficient,…Read More→

In dentistry, labor costs usually represent the highest percentage of practice overhead. The industry average is around 27 percent and may or may not include benefits like retirement contributions, healthcare premiums, bonuses, and other benefits. I’ve seen practices where labor costs exceed 30 and even 40 percent of overhead expenses, and while I understand how…Read More→

  In this edition of Dental CPAs Q&A, I’m going tackle a difficult topic: labor costs. It’s a sensitive subject to bring up sometimes because most dentists I know think the world of their staff, and want to compensate them accordingly for all the work they do supporting and growing the practice. There are limits…Read More→

ORDINARY & NECESSARY This blog is LONG overdue. Over the years and moreso the past two to three years a client asks us about employing their children as models because they heard it from a colleague or at a study club meeting or at a seminar. Many times it’s the seminar speaker, who may even…Read More→

Last October, I wrote about a handful of specific definitions of the Qualified Business Income Deduction (QBID) as they applied to dentists. Given the law’s restrictions on type of business and income threshold, we already know that some dentists won’t qualify. But there are enough who will benefit a little all the way up to…Read More→

I was talking with a young dentist recently who was debating the pros and cons of opening her own practice and starting from scratch or buying an existing dental practice where the variables are known. For anyone who’s been in this position before, you know there’s no easy answer. There will be unknowns in both…Read More→

In one of our recent posts, I talked about how finding the perfect dental practice is nearly impossible. It’s more important to look for practices with good numbers and even better potential. The problem is finding those practices and sorting out the “good” numbers from the not so good, and assessing the potential future performance…Read More→

In my last post, I discussed a recent and real-life example of a dentist who was understandably put off by the asking price of a practice they were looking at. My advice was not to discount high overhead, it may not be a bad thing for new buyers and different issues that contribute to it…Read More→

In the course of my career, I’ve advised many new buyers as they navigated purchasing a dental practice. Typically A/R is not included in the overall purchase price, and rather is a separate value agreed upon by both parties. How much do you know about what you’re agreeing to? Below I’ve highlighted some common myths…Read More→