Payment in instalments at your dental clinic: agreeing it and collecting it without losing track

Implant work or orthodontics is not decided in the chair alone. It is decided at home, with the treatment plan in front of the patient, and the question that weighs most is not always clinical: how am I going to pay for it?

Being able to spread the cost is often the difference between "I'll think about it" and "let's go ahead". But offering instalments is only half the job. The other half — the one that gets complicated — is collecting them.

Four ways to split the payment

There is no single right way for everything. What works is having a few clear options and choosing the one that fits each treatment:

1. Payment in full. For what is done in one or two visits. No complications.
2. A deposit and the rest at the end. Part at the start, which commits, and the rest on completion. Suits treatments lasting a few weeks.
3. One payment per treatment or per phase. Each phase is paid when it is done. It is the natural shape of a phased plan, such as an implant with its surgery, its healing time and its crown.
4. Monthly instalments. For what lasts many months, such as orthodontics: the patient pays as they progress, and the monthly amount is easier to take in than the total.

Whichever it is, the figures have to add up to the cent with the plan's total. An instalment rounded off so that a few cents are left dangling at the end is an awkward conversation nobody needs to have.

The payment schedule goes in the treatment plan

If instalments are agreed verbally at the desk, everyone remembers something different. That is why the payment schedule has to go in the treatment plan itself: each payment with its amount and its date.

That way the patient takes home not only what it costs but how they are going to pay. It lets them discuss it with their family without calling to ask, and it avoids, months later, the "I understood the second instalment was due in March".

The hard part is following it

Agreeing the plan takes a moment. Following it takes months. And that is where it gets complicated:

• What has been paid and what has not. With twenty treatments under way, knowing which patient is up to date means looking at the till and the plan at the same time.
• Partial payments. The patient brings half an instalment. How much is left? What happens to the next one?
• What is overdue. An overdue instalment nobody sees turns into three.
• The parallel spreadsheet. It is the usual fix, and it is the one that stops being updated the first day reception is busy.

The rule is the same as for any payment: if keeping track is a separate job, it ends up not being done. Taking the payment and tracking it have to be the same action.

How ClaudIA Dental handles it

In ClaudIA Dental, each treatment plan has its own payment plan:

• It is proposed on its own. You choose the shape — payment in full, a deposit and the rest, one payment per treatment or monthly instalments — and the plan comes out adding up to the cent. It can be adjusted before it is saved.
• Each payment shows where it stands: paid, part-paid, pending or overdue. Whatever is charged at the till is deducted on its own, in order, and anything collected another way is recorded against its payment.
• Collecting is one button. From the treatment plan, "Charge" opens the till with that payment, what remains and the patient already filled in, and the ticket stays linked to the plan.
• Overdue payments, in plain sight. In the list of treatment plans, those with an overdue payment say so.
• On paper and in the link. The treatment plan's PDF and the private link the patient receives show the agreed payment schedule, each payment with its amount and its date.

And if a treatment plan stalls before it is accepted, ClaudIA follows up with two messages at most, never naming the treatment or the amount. We cover it in following up implant quotes without chasing the patient.

The phased treatment plan and its payment schedule are explained at soyclaudiadental.com/en/funciones/presupuestos-con-planes-de-fase, and what the clinic sees in its reports — the acceptance rate, how much of what was accepted has been collected — at soyclaudiadental.com/en/funciones/informes-clinica-dental.

A well-run payment plan does not only help the patient say yes. It makes sure the clinic gets paid for the work it has already done.