Dental Practice Dashboard for Open Dental
The practice dashboard Open Dental never shipped
Open Dental holds everything you need to run the practice. It just doesn't show it to you on one screen. DentalCanvas does — live, read-only, on your server.
The specific problem
Open Dental is an excellent practice management system and a poor dashboard. That's not a criticism; it was never trying to be one. Its reporting lives in the Reports menu, one report at a time, each with its own date filters and its own definition of a number.
So the morning huddle becomes a scavenger hunt. Someone runs a Production report. Someone else runs a Daily Collections report. A third person exports to a spreadsheet because the two don't reconcile. By the time anyone has a picture of the day, the first patient is in the chair and the huddle has become a status meeting nobody acted on.
What you want is one screen, standing, that everyone looks at.
What's on the screen
Today. Scheduled production versus goal. Collections so far. Open chairs and where they are. Unconfirmed appointments with enough lead time to still do something about them. The front-office worklist for the day — same-day treatment opportunities, unscheduled treatment plans, patients due for recall who are already on the schedule for something else. See the morning huddle view.
This month. Gross and net production against goal, with live goal bars so the room can see the gap without anyone doing arithmetic out loud. Collections percentage. New patient count. Case acceptance rate.
By provider. Scorecards per provider and per hygienist. Production per clinical hour — not production per hour worked, which flatters whoever had the most no-shows. Case acceptance against scheduling capacity, so you can tell the difference between "the doctor isn't presenting" and "there's nowhere to put the patient."
Money that's stuck. Claims aging by bucket. Denial patterns. Outstanding patient balances by age. Membership plan income set against write-offs, which is the number most practices never look at and most often get wrong. More on claims.
How it connects
Through the official Open Dental API, in read-only mode. Nineteen core data areas are read; nothing is ever written back. No migration, no data conversion, no switching your PMS, no nightly upload of your patient database to somebody's cloud.
You choose the endpoint: Local API (port 30222) for maximum speed with data staying on-network, Service API (port 30223) for multi-workstation setups, or the Remote API when you need to see the practice from somewhere that isn't the practice.
Supported on Open Dental v18 through v26. Installs in under ten minutes. One practice license covers every computer in the office — you are not paying per seat, per user, or per workstation. Technical detail.
Deterministic by design
Every metric on every screen is a defined formula computed against Open Dental's own tables. Production is production the way your ledger defines it. Collections nets out the adjustments Open Dental says are adjustments.
Nothing is modeled, predicted, or estimated. There is no AI guessing at your numbers, which matters the first time your CPA, your banker, or a prospective buyer asks how a figure was derived — you can show them the rule. Marketing attribution is described as traceable, because tracing a patient from source to production is something you can audit; claiming an exact dollar attribution for a referral is something nobody can.
Who this is for
Practice owners who want the number without a meeting. Office managers who are currently rebuilding the same spreadsheet every Monday. Multi-location groups and DSOs that need each site measured the same way. Anyone running Open Dental who has looked at a $400-plus/month cloud analytics quote and wondered whether there's a version of this that doesn't rent forever.
What it doesn't do
It doesn't send patient texts, run your phones, or manage reviews — Weave, Solutionreach and their peers do that, and DentalCanvas sits alongside them rather than replacing them. It doesn't schedule your staff. It doesn't write to your database. It reports, and it hands your team a worklist.
Common questions
Does DentalCanvas replace Open Dental?
No. It sits on top of the Open Dental you already run. No migration, no switching, no data conversion.
Where does it run?
On your practice server. Local-first, so patient data stays on your network.
Is it per-user pricing?
No. One practice license covers every computer in the office.
Can it edit anything in Open Dental?
No. Read-only, zero writes.
How is this different from Open Dental's built-in reports?
Built-in reports are one report at a time, each run manually with its own filters. DentalCanvas is a live dashboard that puts today's operating picture on a single screen and produces a worklist your team can act on.
Which Open Dental versions work?
v18 through v26.
How long does setup take?
Under ten minutes.
Watch the 90-second demo. Monthly subscription or one-time lifetime license. 30-day money-back guarantee.
Read-only analytics · Analytics · Staff training · vs Dental Intelligence