Open Dental stays your practice management system and your ledger of record. This connects through Open Dental's documented API. Answering questions reads from Open Dental and writes nothing back, it does not replace Open Dental's Reports menu, and nothing needs to be migrated.
We issue an API key for your office and you paste it into Open Dental under Setup > Advanced Setup > API. The connection runs through Open Dental's API and your eConnector, so there is no database login, VPN or port forwarding. If you're on Open Dental Cloud, talk to us before you start; we haven't verified that setup with a Cloud office yet. After that, appointments, procedures and patients sync about every 15 minutes, and ledger and A/R data are pulled on a schedule. The first sync goes back about two years.
Ask the way you'd ask your office manager: "What was production last month?", "What's our collection rate this quarter?", "How much unscheduled treatment is sitting out there?" The assistant works out which number you mean and which date range, then runs the calculation against your Open Dental data. Production is the completed procedure charges on your synced Open Dental ledger minus adjustments. If no charges have synced for the range, it falls back to appointment fees and leaves out cancelled and no-show appointments. Collections are payments, including insurance payments, minus refunds. The net collection rate is collections divided by net production, and the gross rate is shown next to it. Production, collections and collection rate answers are compared with the prior period.
This is the part I care about most as a dentist reading my own numbers. The AI model's job is to work out what you're asking for. The figure itself is calculated by regular code, and the model is handed the finished result with its definition and date range and told to report it exactly, not recompute it. Any month can come out above 100% if you collected old A/R faster than you produced. When the production counted from appointments and the charges on your ledger disagree by more than a few percent, the answer includes a note saying so, so you can tell which effect you're looking at. If data for the range is incomplete, that caveat comes back with the number and the answer has to say so.
For Open Dental offices the end-of-day report is emailed about 30 minutes after your own closing time, using your time zone and the hours you set for each weekday. Its month-to-date production, collections and collection rate use the same calculation as the assistant, so those figures match what you'd get by asking. Same-day treatment that hasn't reached the synced ledger by closing can be missing from that first email. When that happens, that section is marked pending rather than reported as zero. The same-day treatment then shows up in your month-to-date figures in the next report and in the assistant once the procedures sync. Payments posted after the email goes out are not re-sent; they show up in the next report and in the assistant.
Setup takes a few minutes and involves no migration. We issue the API key, and in Open Dental you confirm the eConnector is running (eServices > eConnector Service shows its status), enable the API, and add the key. Click Connect and we test the connection. Your server has to stay on overnight so the scheduled pulls can run. Once the first sync finishes you can start asking questions, and once your weekday office hours are set in Settings, the end-of-day email starts on the next day you're open. You can turn the key off from inside Open Dental at any time. Nothing gets installed on your workstations.
Yes, and that's the main reason this exists. Rather than choosing a report, setting the date range and the providers, and reading the totals, you type the question. Production, collections and collection rate come back as one number for the date range you asked about, with a comparison to the prior period. Unscheduled treatment comes back as a single dollar total for the trailing 12 months. If you want a line-by-line breakdown, Open Dental's own reports are still the better tool for that.
Production and Income in Open Dental's Reports menu is accurate and detailed, and you should keep using it for month-end and for your accountant. The difference is effort and format. Here you ask "what was production last month and how does it compare to the month before?" and get the answer in one line, without picking options or exporting anything. Neither one replaces the other.
Net collection rate is collections divided by net production, multiplied by 100. Net production is gross production minus adjustments. Collections are patient and insurance payments, with refunds taken out. The gross rate is shown alongside the net. Any month can come out above 100% if you collected old A/R faster than you produced. If the production counted from appointments and your ledger's procedure charges differ by more than a few percent, the answer adds a note saying so.
Yes. It adds up diagnosed, treatment-planned procedures that have no appointment booked, over the trailing 12 months. That total is rebuilt overnight from your Open Dental procedures, so it reflects yesterday's treatment plans and bookings. It doesn't read Open Dental's Unscheduled or ASAP appointment lists, and it doesn't add those patients to a call list. It gives you the dollar total so you know how much is sitting there.
The AI model's job is to work out which metric and date range you mean. The figure itself is then calculated by regular code from your Open Dental data, and the model is handed the finished result with its definition and date range and told to report it exactly, not recompute it. If data for the range is incomplete, that caveat comes back with the number and the answer has to say so.
Yes. Connected Open Dental offices get an end-of-day email about 30 minutes after their own closing time, based on the hours you set for each weekday in Settings. Same-day treatment that hasn't synced by closing can miss the first email. When that happens, the same-day treatment section is marked pending rather than shown as zero. Once the procedures sync, they appear in the next report's month-to-date figures and in the assistant. Payments posted after the email goes out aren't re-sent; they appear in the next report and in the assistant.
Appointments and procedures sync from Open Dental about every 15 minutes. Ledger and A/R data are pulled on a schedule through the day and overnight. The unscheduled treatment total is rebuilt overnight, so it reflects yesterday's treatment plans and bookings. Card and text-to-pay payments taken through Intake.Dental are posted to your Open Dental ledger, so they count in collections once the ledger syncs. That's current enough for "how did last week go?" but it isn't live to the second. If you just posted a payment, give it a little while before asking about today.
Answering your questions and building the end-of-day report write nothing to Open Dental. They don't post payments or adjustments and they don't change appointments or treatment plans. The assistant can also suggest turning on an automation or draft a message for you to send. Those only happen after you confirm them, and features like texting or online booking do record in Open Dental, for example as Comm Log entries or new appointments. Open Dental stays the system of record.
No. Intake.Dental is an independent product. Open Dental Software doesn't endorse or certify it. It connects using Open Dental's published API with a key you add and can disable at any time. We sign a BAA, encrypt PHI at the field level at rest, and keep every query scoped to your practice.
If you run Open Dental and want to know last month's collections or how much treatment is still unscheduled, you can ask and get the number back in a sentence, without building a report. The number is calculated by ordinary code from your Open Dental appointments, ledger and treatment-planned procedures, and the AI model is told to report it exactly as calculated. You also get an end-of-day email after you close. Same-day treatment posted late can be missing from it; that section is flagged as pending rather than zero, and the treatment shows up in the next report and in the assistant once it syncs. Answering questions writes nothing to Open Dental, and Open Dental's own reports are still what you use for month-end detail.
Open Dental is a trademark of Open Dental Software, Inc. Intake.Dental is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Open Dental Software, Inc.
You keep Open Dental. Type a plain question like "what were collections last month?" or "how much unscheduled treatment do we have?" and get a number back, calculated from your Open Dental appointments, ledger transactions and treatment-planned procedures. The number comes from ordinary code, not from the AI model, and the model is told to report it exactly as calculated. Open Dental offices also get an end-of-day report by email after closing. One honest caveat: same-day treatment posted late can miss that email. When it does, that section is flagged as pending instead of showing zero, and the treatment appears in the next report's month-to-date figures and in the assistant once it syncs.
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