Split the profit line down the corridor
The chair and the bench earn differently, and one blended margin hides both. The chair's economics are revenue per clinical hour: consults, impressions, insertions and adjustments against the hours the schedule actually holds. The bench's economics are cost per case: materials, bench hours and machine time per arch. Report them together and a slow month at the chair can masquerade as a materials problem, or the reverse.
Case types behave differently too. A full arch is a long-cycle, materials-heavy project; a reline or repair is same-day work with little material and almost no lab cost, quietly carrying some of the clinic's best margin in its least glamorous revenue. Once contribution per case type is visible, scheduling stops being first-come-first-served: repair slots protect cash flow, and the big cases get booked where the bench can actually absorb them.
Make it, or send it out
Every fabrication step is a make-or-buy decision, and the honest answer changes with volume:
| Case work | The in-house test |
|---|---|
| Relines and repairs | Keep in-house: same-day turnaround is the competitive edge no commercial lab can match |
| Cast partial frameworks | Usually out: casting equipment rarely pays for one clinic's volume, so buy the framework and finish it on your bench |
| Digital dentures | In-house once annual case volume covers the printer or mill, its materials and your design hours; before that, the outside lab is cheaper than it feels |
The digital question deserves arithmetic, not enthusiasm: cases per year multiplied by the lab fee each one avoids, set against the machine, the consumables and the bench hours it consumes. We build that model before the sales rep's demo, so the machine is bought on your numbers or not at all. Bought, it lands on the balance sheet with a CCA plan already attached.
Choose your payers on purpose
Between private patients at your fee guide rates, ODSP work on the program schedule and CDCP claims paid on the federal grid, the same clinical hour can realize very different revenue. Most clinics let that mix drift; a CFO measures it. The metric is realized fee per clinical hour by payer, after write-offs, and it turns payer policy into a capacity decision: program work is excellent for filling hours that would otherwise sit empty and for keeping the bench busy, and expensive when it displaces private demand you actually had.
The point is not to rank patients. It is that a clinic that knows these numbers can take on program volume deliberately, quote its capacity honestly, and see in the monthly report when the mix has moved.
The succession trade, from either side
Denturism has a steady flow of practices changing hands, and the numbers work matters on both sides of the table. Buying a retiring denturist's clinic, the diligence goes past the equipment list: how active the recall base really is, what the case files say about repeat reline and repair revenue, how old the bench equipment is and what replacing it costs, and what the lease allows. Selling, the same items groomed two years early are what a buyer's lender will lend against.
Financing is where this firm is unusually at home: Walla Assaf spent years in banking and corporate finance before founding the practice, and a purchase or fit-out package built the way lenders read them, statements, forecast and repayment story in one document, changes the terms you are offered. Business Financing Advisory handles that piece when the moment comes.
What the engagement looks like
Our Fractional CFO service runs on a monthly rhythm: chair and bench margins reported side by side, a rolling cash view across payer timing, and one working session where the current decision, machine, hire, payer mix, second operatory, gets a model instead of a hunch. It sits on top of clean books, ours or yours, and is quoted in writing after a free discovery call, for clinics across Mississauga and the GTA.
