Dental Daily Production Goal: How to Calculate It
By Spiro Leunes, CPA | CEO, MRL Advisory Group, New Jersey and New York Dental CPAs
Ask a dentist what their daily production goal is and I usually get one of three answers: a round number that sounds good, a number a consultant gave them four years ago, or a blank stare. When I ask where the number came from, the conversation is over.
A daily production goal is arithmetic. It comes from what the practice has to bring in over the next 12 months, spread across the days you'll actually be open. It also isn't something you calculate once and forget, because when the practice changes, the number has to change with it.
Start With the Statement of Cash Flows
Your prior-year P&L is a good starting point, but it doesn't tell the whole story. A dental practice has cash requirements that never show up as expenses on it: loan principal, equipment purchases and owner distributions, for example. The statement of cash flows shows where the cash actually went last year, which is why I start there. Use it to build the list below, then project the next 12 months.
If your books don't produce a statement of cash flows, our accounting and bookkeeping team can help you build one from your balance sheet and bank activity.
What the Practice Has to Bring In
Start by working out your required annual cash flow, which is what the practice needs to generate in cash over the coming year. It has seven parts:
Your operating overhead. That's payroll, supplies, lab, rent, marketing, insurance, software, professional fees and the other costs of running the practice, excluding your own compensation. Use cash costs, which means including interest expense and leaving out depreciation and amortization, since those reduce profit on the P&L without taking cash out of the bank. Start with last year's actuals and adjust for anything you already know is changing, including the small operational details where practices quietly lose profit.
The owner income you require. This is what you need, not what happens to be left over, and it's the step most dentists skip. That's how you end up with a practice where the owner gets paid last. Define it as the full pre-tax amount you need from the practice, including any employer payroll taxes and benefits the practice pays on your behalf. How you take that income out of the practice is a separate tax question, so decide the number first.
Debt principal. Your P&L shows interest expense, and that belongs in operating overhead. Principal payments on equipment loans, practice acquisition loans and other debt still take cash, though, and they never touch the P&L. If you're paying $100,000 of principal this year, that cash has to come from somewhere, so it belongs in the production goal. I cover the debt side of ownership in the real economics of buying vs. starting a practice.
Major purchases. If you know you're buying a CBCT, replacing chairs, renovating operatories or upgrading technology, build it in so it doesn't surprise the practice halfway through the year. If you finance the purchase, count only the down payment here, since the loan's principal payments belong in the debt line. Equipment also has tax consequences, including bonus depreciation and Section 179, which I cover in my 2026 dental tax planning article and the mid-year tax checkup.
Provider, staffing and expansion costs. If you're bringing on another provider, adding staff or opening another office, the model has to reflect it before the cost hits the bank account. Put those costs here rather than in operating overhead so they aren't counted twice.
Anything else you know is coming. If something will take cash this year and isn't covered above, add it.
A profit cushion. I'd start with roughly 5 to 10 percent of the other six items, then adjust for the practice. The cushion absorbs a slow quarter or an unexpected expense and keeps one bad month from turning into a line of credit. Planned equipment belongs in the purchases line, not in the cushion, so don't count it twice.
Add those together and you have the amount the practice has to collect in a year.
Turn Cash Flow Into a Daily Production Goal
Once you have that number, the rest is straightforward. Divide required annual cash flow by your net collection rate, then divide the result by the number of clinical days you'll actually work:
Daily production goal = required annual cash flow ÷ net collection rate ÷ actual clinical days
The arithmetic is simple. The first number is where the work is, and it has to reflect the practice as it really is.
Production and collections aren't the same thing, which is why you divide by your net collection rate. If you need to collect $1,500,000 and you collect 98 percent of what you're entitled to, you have to produce about $1,530,000. At 92 percent, you have to produce about $1,630,000 to end up in the same place. That's why accounts receivable and front desk discipline are production issues, not just billing issues.
Use your own historical net collection rate, based on your actual results over the past 12 months, not the 98 percent in these examples. Keep in mind, too, that this gives you a net production goal, meaning production after write-offs and adjustments. If your schedule and reports show gross fees, adjust for your expected write-offs before you compare them to the goal.
Then divide by the days you'll really be open, not 52 weeks' worth. Start with the weeks you're open, which already leaves out your vacation weeks, multiply by your clinical days per week, and subtract holidays, continuing education, conferences and any other planned closures.
If you're open four clinical days a week for 50 weeks, that's 200 days. Take out 10 for holidays, CE and other closures and you're at 190. Most four-day practices land somewhere between 185 and 195 clinical days a year, so use your real number.
A Worked Example
Let me walk through an example, with one caution first. This practice is well run, high performing and efficient, with strong collections, controlled overhead and a schedule that stays full. Most practices will look different. Replace these inputs with your own, starting with your historical net collection rate, because if yours is below 98 percent, the production you need goes up.
Say the practice has:
Operating overhead: $900,000
Owner income requirement: $350,000
Profit cushion: $75,000
That's $1,325,000 the practice has to collect. The cushion is 6 percent of the other $1,250,000, which is inside the range I mentioned earlier. At a 98 percent collection rate, the practice needs to produce $1,352,041. Over 190 clinical days, that's $7,116 a day, or roughly $7,100.
Now add what that first pass left out. Suppose the practice also has $60,000 of loan principal payments and $40,000 of planned equipment purchases. Required annual cash flow rises to $1,425,000. I'll leave the cushion at $75,000 for simplicity, which is now about 5.6 percent of the other $1,350,000.
At 98 percent, the practice needs $1,454,082 in production, and over 190 days that's $7,653 a day, or roughly $7,650. That's about $540 a day more than the first calculation, and none of the increase would have shown up as an operating expense on the P&L.
That's why I build the number from cash flow. It's also why the goal is defensible: you can put it in front of your team and explain every piece of it.
Split It Between Doctor and Hygiene
One practice-wide number is too blunt to schedule against. Doctor and hygiene are different columns, run by different people, with different capacity constraints. You can hit your total goal while hygiene runs 20 percent under and never see the problem.
Take the practice-wide daily goal and divide it based on how your practice actually produces. Hygiene typically contributes about 30 percent of total production, with a range of 25 to 35 percent.
With a total goal of $7,650 and hygiene expected to generate 30 percent, the hygiene goal comes to $2,295 a day and the doctor goal to $5,355. Don't blindly use 30 percent, though. Use your own history, capacity and provider mix.
This shortcut assumes the doctor and hygiene work the same days. If they don't, split the required annual production first, then divide each column by its own clinical days.
I walk through the capacity math in dental hygiene production. Adding a hygiene day increases capacity, but it also changes payroll and operating costs, so the model moves. For the bigger picture, see why a thriving hygiene department drives revenue.
Goals by Provider and by the Hour
If you have associates, each producer needs a goal tied to the days and hours they actually work. Divide a provider's required annual production by their clinical days. An associate who's expected to produce $300,000 over 100 clinical days has a goal of $3,000 a day.
Set each provider's required production from their own economics: their compensation, the costs they add and what their schedule can realistically support. A doctor working three days a week shouldn't be measured like one working five.
When you add an associate, don't just drop them into the schedule and expect the old goal to work. Model the associate's compensation, the payroll tax treatment, supplies, lab and support staff, then estimate the production they should add. My guide on when to hire an associate walks through the timing.
Specialists are a different model. An oral surgeon, periodontist or other specialist has a different procedure mix, lab cost, staffing need and pay arrangement than a general dentist, and may have fewer clinical days but much higher production per day. Their target should reflect their own economics, and I break down the numbers in adding a specialty to your practice.
Once you have a daily goal, convert it to an hourly one, because that's the number that actually drives scheduling. Divide the provider's daily goal by the clinical hours in the day. Take the $5,355 doctor goal from the split above: if the doctor sees patients for eight hours, that's about $669 an hour.
When your team knows the doctor column has to average about $670 an hour, they can see right away that three hours of lower-production procedures back to back can make it hard to hit the day's goal. That doesn't mean you skip those procedures. It means you build the day around them.
Schedule to the Goal, Not Around It
This is where most goals fall apart. The number goes on the board, and then the schedule gets built the way it always has, by filling the next open slot with whoever calls.
Block your high value procedures first. Reserve specific time each week for crown and bridge, implants, endo, whatever your higher production procedures are, and fill in around them. Leave those blocks open and emergencies and short appointments will eat them by Tuesday.
Then check the schedule against the goal two weeks out, not the morning of. The production gap is simply the daily goal minus what's currently scheduled. If the goal for a day two weeks from now is $7,650 and the schedule holds $5,200, you have a $2,450 gap, and two weeks is enough time to fill it with diagnosed treatment from the charts. The morning of, all you can do is watch.
Treat a short day as information, and make sure your team knows the gap before the first patient walks in. That's the whole point of a morning huddle.
One more thing: don't let the goal drive clinical decisions. A production goal is a planning tool, not a clinical directive. If hitting it means diagnosing treatment that isn't indicated, then the goal is wrong, the fees are wrong, the overhead is too high, the capacity is short or you have an insurance problem. Fix the economics and leave the dentistry alone.
When the Number Is Unreachable
Sometimes an owner builds this and finds a daily goal the practice can't physically produce. That's useful information, and it usually comes down to one of four things.
Your fees may be too low. If the goal is unreachable at your current fee schedule but reasonable after a normal increase, you have your answer. Most practices that feel squeezed haven't raised fees in too long.
Your overhead may be too high. Three points of unnecessary overhead on a $1.5 million practice is $45,000 a year you wouldn't have to collect. Your payer mix may be working against you. If a meaningful share of your production is written down by plans that pay below your cost to deliver, the goal may be unreachable by design. That's a PPO participation question, and sometimes a matter of renegotiating reimbursements. If you're following the Delta Dental lawsuits, I'd still build the goal on the reimbursements you receive today, not on a settlement or rate change that hasn't happened yet.
Or you may need capacity you don't have: more hygiene days, more operatories or an associate. That's a real answer too, and it's better reached by arithmetic than by instinct.
Review It When the Practice Changes
I'd never calculate a daily production goal in January and blindly use it for the next 12 months. Recalculate it whenever something significant changes:
A new associate or specialist
Additional hygiene days or another operatory
A major equipment purchase or new debt
A fee increase or a change in PPO participation
A significant staffing change, including how you pay and bonus your team
A practice expansion
A change in your own income requirement
The model should move with the practice.
The Point of the Number
A goal nobody can explain gets ignored, and it should. A goal built from your own cash requirements gives your team something concrete to aim at, and it gives you an honest answer when the practice is busy and the profit isn't there.
It also gives every other system in the practice something to point at. Broken appointments, hygiene reappointment, case acceptance, collections, fees and scheduling all stop being abstract once there's a number they either help you reach or keep you from reaching. It's a big part of how established practices grow without chasing more new patients, and it's the same reason I keep coming back to doing the basics consistently instead of looking for something clever.
Don't get married to the number, though. Providers, equipment, debt and insurance participation all change, and the best goal is the one you keep updating. Set it once a year, split it by column, revisit it when the practice changes and say it out loud every morning.
At MRL Advisory Group, we help dental practice owners across New Jersey and New York build production goals from their actual cash-flow requirements through our advisory services, keep the underlying numbers accurate with accounting and bookkeeping and coordinate the results with proactive tax planning.
Not sure what your daily production goal should be? Schedule a free consultation and we'll build the model around your practice.
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