Hiring an ERP consultant for dental service organizations usually starts the same way: each practice runs its own books, and someone rebuilds the group’s numbers in a spreadsheet every month. Lucentive replaces that with one accounting and inventory system built around how a DSO grows.
What changes when the books are consolidated
- Every clinic posts to one general ledger, with location, provider and service line as reporting dimensions instead of separate company files.
- Charges between the management company and the practices are recorded once and eliminated at consolidation.
- Leadership sees production, collections and margin by location, fed from your practice management system, without waiting for a manual roll-up.
Adding practices without adding spreadsheet work
Acquisitions are where a DSO’s finance team feels the strain. We design the chart of accounts and entity structure so a new practice becomes another entity and another set of dimension values, not another file someone has to stitch in. Opening balances, vendors and history move across during onboarding, and the first close runs in parallel with the old books before anyone relies on the new numbers.
Accounting and inventory at the core, best fit for the rest
Supplies and equipment sit in the same system as the ledger, so purchasing across clinics lands against the right location. Payroll and practice management stay in the tools that suit them and connect to the ledger, rather than being bundled into one suite you only half use.
Who does the work
You work directly with the people who scope the project and do the work: CPAs, training specialists, developers and engineers. The same people run the build, the data migration and the parallel close, and they stay on for support after go-live.
Not sure the group has outgrown its current setup? The eight-question assessment will tell you, including when the answer is to stay where you are. Related reading: multi-entity accounting software.
Common questions
Can we keep our practice management software?
Yes. Scheduling, charting and patient billing stay in the practice management system your clinics already use. It feeds production and collections to the ledger, and the ERP handles accounting, inventory and consolidation.
What happens when we acquire a new practice?
It is set up as a new entity on the existing structure. Its opening balances, vendors and history are loaded, its reports appear alongside every other location, and its first close runs in parallel before the group relies on it.
How we work
- Assess: a fixed-fee advisory, usually two to four weeks, built from your actual close and ending in a recommendation you can act on.
- Implement: chart of accounts, integrations and data migration, proved by a parallel close before go-live.
- Support: the principal consultants who built the system stay on after launch.
Related services: ERP Consultant for Healthcare, Post-Merger ERP Integration and ERP for Private Equity Portfolio Companies. Or see all our ERP consulting services.