What Financial Reports Should Your Dental Practice Review Every Month?

May 2026  •  8 min read

Most dental practice owners receive their financial reports late, review them quickly, and move on. The reports arrive three or four weeks after month-end, the numbers feel stale, and there is no clear framework for what to look at or what it means. So the reports sit in an inbox or a folder, and the practice runs on gut feel until tax season forces a look backward.

It does not have to work that way. There are five reports that, reviewed together within 10 days of month-end, give you everything you need to know about whether your practice is healthy, where money is leaking, and whether trends are moving in the right direction.

The P&L: Where Your Money Went

Your profit and loss statement summarizes revenue, costs, and expenses for the month. In dental, a useful P&L needs to show production and collections separately, break expenses into categories that match commonly published dental practice benchmarks, and separate owner compensation from practice overhead.

What to look at each month: compare each major category (staffing, supplies, lab, rent) as a percentage of net production to the prior month and to the same month last year. If a percentage jumps more than 2 points, investigate before assuming it is a trend. One large supply order or a bonus payment can spike a single month without indicating a real problem.

The P&L is the report where your chart of accounts structure matters most. If expenses are lumped into broad categories, you cannot benchmark. If revenue is a single line, you cannot distinguish production issues from collection issues.

The Balance Sheet: What You Own and Owe

The balance sheet is the report most dental practice owners skip, but it tells you things the P&L cannot. It shows your total accounts receivable (how much is owed to you), your liabilities (what you owe), and your equity position.

What to look at each month: total AR and how it compares to the prior month. If AR is growing faster than production, claims are not being paid or patient balances are not being collected. Also check your current liabilities. If accounts payable is growing, you are paying bills slower, which may indicate a cash flow issue the P&L has not surfaced yet.

For practices with equipment loans or lines of credit, the balance sheet is where you see your total debt position and how fast you are paying it down.

The Aging Report: Who Owes You

The aging report breaks your accounts receivable into buckets by age: 0 to 30 days, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and 90+. This is the report that tells you whether your collection process is working.

What to look at each month: the percentage of total AR in the 90+ bucket. A common industry standard is that less than 10% of total AR should be over 90 days old. If yours is above 10%, claims are not being followed up on, patient statements are not going out, or you have balances that should have been written off as bad debt months ago.

The aging report should be split by payer type: insurance aging and patient aging. A spike in insurance aging means claims are stuck in processing or denial. A spike in patient aging means your statement and follow-up process has a gap. The fix is different for each, so the distinction matters.

For a deeper dive on reading this report, see How to Read Your Dental Insurance Aging Report.

The Production Report: What You Did

The production report comes from your practice management software, not your accounting software. It shows gross production by provider, by procedure category, and by date. This is the operational side of your financials.

What to look at each month: total production compared to goal, production per provider, and hygiene production as a percentage of total (benchmark: 30 to 40%). The production report is also where you see whether your schedule is being used efficiently. If production per clinical day is declining while your schedule looks full, you may have a mix issue (too many low-value appointments) or a scheduling efficiency problem.

The connection between your production report and your P&L is the reconciliation: production recorded in the PMS should tie to revenue recorded in your accounting software, with contractual adjustments as the bridge. If the two systems do not reconcile, one of them is wrong, and your financial statements cannot be trusted.

Bank Reconciliation: Making Sure It All Matches

Bank reconciliation is not a report you read for insight. It is a report you need to confirm that everything else is accurate. It verifies that the transactions recorded in your accounting software match the transactions in your bank account.

What to confirm each month: every bank account and credit card is reconciled to the penny. If your bookkeeper is not providing reconciled statements monthly, you have no assurance that the P&L and balance sheet are accurate. Unreconciled books can hide duplicate entries, missed deposits, unauthorized charges, and timing errors that compound over time.

Bank reconciliation should be completed as part of the monthly close, not as a separate exercise. If your books are not reconciled by the 10th, ask your bookkeeper why.

FAQ: Monthly Dental Practice Reports

How long should my monthly financial review take?

Fifteen to thirty minutes if your reports are structured well. You are not auditing the books. You are looking for changes from prior month, checking key ratios against benchmarks, and flagging anything that needs investigation. The review should be short because the reporting should be clear.

What if my bookkeeper does not provide all five reports?

Ask for them. A P&L and balance sheet are standard. An aging report should be generated from your PMS or accounting software. A production report comes from your PMS. Bank reconciliation is a basic bookkeeping function. If your bookkeeper cannot provide these five reports monthly, they may not have the dental-specific knowledge your practice needs.

Should I use cash basis or accrual basis for monthly reports?

For management reporting, accrual or production-based reporting gives you a more accurate picture of practice performance. Cash basis reports are distorted by insurance timing lag and can make a healthy month look weak or a weak month look strong. Your tax return may still be filed on cash basis per your tax preparer's recommendation, per IRS rules.

When should I receive my monthly reports?

By the 10th of the following month. If you are getting February's reports in late March, the data is too old to act on. The 10th is an achievable standard for a bookkeeper who is receiving bank feeds, PMS reports, and supporting documents in a timely way.

P.S. Reciprocity Accounting delivers monthly dental financial reports you can actually read and act on. See how we can help your practice.