2025 Profitability Benchmark Report
Dental Practice Overhead Benchmarks
How profitable is your dental practice?
Real operating averages from 37 general dental practices in Texas — not national surveys, not theory, not Instagram math.
Bookkeeping for dentists only · 90+ dental practices · Serving practices across the USA
- Practices analyzed
- 37 practices
- Average EBITDA margin
- 35.22%
- Scope
- TX general practices, 2025
Start here
Read this before the numbers
You can't fix what you don't know is broken.
When you look at your P&L, how do you know if your numbers are good — or just familiar? Most dentists glance at last year, check the bank balance, and move on. This report shows where you actually stand against real, aggregated data from practices operating in the same market you do.
Benchmarks don't tell you what you should be. They tell you where to start asking questions. Being above or below average isn't automatically good or bad — but if you're way off in a category, that's usually where profit is leaking.
The Benchmarks
Average percent of collections
Each line is the average across 37 general dental practices in Texas for 2025. Bars are scaled for visual comparison.
| Expense category | Percent of collections | What it covers and where profit leaks |
|---|---|---|
| Employee Expenses | 31% | Hygiene, admin, payroll taxes and benefits — excludes the owner and other dentists. Usually the single biggest driver of profit or loss. The most profitable practices don't pay less; they staff more intentionally. |
| Overhead | 9.77% | Software, office supplies, admin tools, merchant services, professional fees. Individually harmless; collectively they add up fast. Ask regularly: what are we paying for that we don't really use? |
| Facilities ExpensesRent alone: 6.96% | 8.59% | Rent, CAM charges, utilities, repairs and maintenance. Costs here are hard to change once set, so they have to be right from the start — problems come from oversized space, expanding too fast, or leases not negotiated well. |
| Laboratory | 5.86% | Combined with supplies, this is just under 11% of collections. It quietly kills profit when invoices aren't reviewed regularly — small daily leaks that compound. |
| Dental Supplies | 5.58% | Compounds every single day when ordering isn't controlled. Most dentists focus on the big expenses and let supplies drift — set par levels and review who's ordering what. |
| Associate / Specialist | 3.83% | Most practices are still owner-doctor driven, using associates strategically rather than heavily. Adding associates too early often strains margin and cash flow. |
| Advertising | 2.5% | Healthy — but this ranges from 0% to 8%. The real question isn't how much you spend, it's whether you track cost per new patient and ROI by channel. If you don't measure it, you're guessing. |
| EBITDA — Profitability | 35.22% | The bottom line these practices actually keep. Strong profitability isn't extreme cost-cutting — it's clarity and consistency: payroll controlled, facilities reasonable, hygiene and lab monitored, overhead intentional. |
How to use these numbers
Don't copy them blindly — use them to ask better questions:
- Why is my payroll higher than my peers?
- Why are my lab or supply costs higher?
- What do these numbers say about how my practice is run?
If you've never compared your practice to real data, you're flying blind — even when revenue looks good.
Every client gets this comparison each month. See the monthly reports we produce, how the combined P&L for multi-practice owners works, or our bookkeeping pricing.
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See where your practice really stands
We do bookkeeping, advisory and taxes for Texas dental practices — with overhead benchmarking against peers built in.
Methodology and disclaimer
Figures are averages across 37 general dental practices in Texas for 2025, presented as a percentage of collections and aggregated so no individual client is identifiable. Provided for general educational purposes only and not as accounting, tax, or financial advice for any specific practice.