Open Dental and Dentrix Reports: Turning Exports Into Real Insight

Open Dental and Dentrix are both full of reports — production, collections, A/R aging, new patients, case acceptance, the lot. Running them was never the hard part. The hard part is getting those numbers out into a single, trended view — and that's where the two systems genuinely differ: Open Dental lets you read its database directly; Dentrix routes you through report exports. Here are the reports that matter in each, the real difference in how you get your data out, and why the built-ins are great for daily operations but weak for tracking KPIs over time.

The reports dental practices actually run

Both systems ship far more reports than anyone uses. The handful that earn their keep are the same in spirit — they just live under different menus.

Open Dental

Open Dental documents over 50 built-in reports, grouped in the Reports menu as Standard, Graphic, and User Query. The ones a practice owner actually opens:

• Production and Income — daily, monthly, annual and per-provider, splitting patient payments from insurance income.
• Aging of A/R and Insurance Aging — receivables by age bucket, and outstanding insurance claims over time.
• Lists — Active Patients, New Patients, Broken Appointments, Treatment Finder (unscheduled treatment), Referral Analysis.
• Graphic Reports — visual, per-provider or per-clinic views of production, A/R, new patients and broken appointments.

Dentrix

Dentrix spreads its reporting across the Office Manager and a newer Reports module. The workhorses, per Dentrix's own publications:

• Day Sheet — the end-of-day ritual: charges, receipts and production totals.
• Practice Advisor — the closest thing to a KPI report, covering production, collections, scheduling, case acceptance, hygiene/continuing care and new patients in one document.
• Provider A/R Totals and the Aging Report — gross and net production and collections, and receivables by guarantor.
• Dentrix Reports module (G7.8 and later) — 14 cleaner reports including A/R Trends, Adjustment Summary, Continuing Care Statistics and New Patient Summary.

The KPIs behind all of these — production, collections and collection ratio, A/R aging, adjustments, new patients, no-shows, case acceptance, hygiene reappointment — are the ones we work through, with the honest benchmark picture, in 10 dental practice KPIs that actually predict growth. This piece is about getting them out.

The real difference: how you get your data out

This is the difference most comparisons skip, and it's the most consequential one for anyone who wants to track numbers over time.

Open Dental hands you the database

Open Dental runs on a standard MySQL/MariaDB database, and it's genuinely open to read. (The "open" is about that database access, not the price — the software itself is licensed.) It ships a built-in User Query tool to "retrieve information from the database that is not accessible through standard reports" — you "write your own query, then run and/or save it to your favorites," with a library of over 1,400 shared queries to start from. Permissions are tiered, so front-desk staff can run released queries while only an admin can write new ones.

It also documents ODBC access, which it describes as "a standardized data connection format which will allow all your data to be directly available to other programs without having to do an export first" — so "any program can then access the database including Word, Excel, Access" without an export step. And the policy is explicit: "Any third party is welcome to query the database as long as no writes are involved." (Writes are blocked outside the API — read access is the open part.) In practice, an Open Dental owner with admin rights can query the database directly for most of what they need.

Dentrix hands you exports

Dentrix takes the opposite approach. Its database is proprietary and its structure is private: Henry Schein One states that it "does not share or divulge the data dictionary or schema." There's no built-in, owner-facing SQL tool. Getting data out means one of two things:

• Report exports. You can print or export any report; most save as PDF, and only a handful (such as the Provider Aging Report's "Generate Data File for Export") produce a CSV you can open in a spreadsheet.
• The licensed developer path. Direct database access exists, but only through the Dentrix Developer Program: a "signed application authenticates using the RegisterUser function, which allows GetConnectionString to return the credentials needed for ODBC access." That's built for software vendors, not for an office manager who wants a spreadsheet.

Where built-in reports run out of road

The built-in reports in both systems are good at what they're for — a snapshot for today or this month. They struggle at the thing owners actually want, which is watching a number move over time. The limits that matter:

• They're point-in-time. A report reflects the day only once the work is entered — the Day Sheet is literally an end-of-day report — so what you get is a snapshot, not a live feed.
• They're one-question-at-a-time. Production is one report, A/R another, new patients a third. Seeing them together — or seeing production against collections across twelve months — means re-running each report per period and stitching the results in a spreadsheet by hand.
• Trending is manual. Neither built-in report set gives you a rolling, cross-KPI view. Dentrix's Practice Advisor comes closest, but it's a static periodic document with vendor benchmarks baked in, not a dataset you can filter and trend yourself.
• Dentrix leans on PDF. Most reports export as PDF; the newer Reports module and specific reports like Provider Aging add CSV, so flat-file export is real — just report-by-report and version-dependent, rather than a database you can query directly.

Don't get fooled by the benchmarks

One warning before you act on any of these reports. Dentrix's Practice Advisor prints benchmark statistics next to your own — and it's easy to read those as industry law. Dentrix itself is more careful, noting that the recommendations "vary based on the size of the practice and number of active patients." They're a starting reference, not a standard.

The classic example is the "case acceptance should be at least 85%" line you'll hear everywhere — a consultant target, not an independent measurement. The same goes for most operational standards in dentistry. We lay out which dental benchmarks are real (the ADA's macro data) and which are folklore in the dental KPIs guide. The short version: the comparison that holds up best is you versus you, over time.

Turning your exports into a trended dashboard

Here's the bridge the vendor pages rarely build. Whatever the reports can't do — trend, combine, compare — a dashboard does, and both systems can feed one. All it needs is a flat export of the basics: visits, appointments and providers. An Open Dental practice pulls that with a query or ODBC; a Dentrix practice exports the reports that offer CSV. Either way, the numbers land in the same shape.

From there it's the same fifteen-minute build we describe for any clinic in Power BI for clinics: drop the export in, and production, collections, no-shows and new patients sit on one screen, trended against your own history.

Frequently asked questions

Written by

Olha · clinic data analyst

I build the reporting our managers open every morning at a multi-branch medical clinic — and package it so other practices don't have to start from scratch.

Open Dental capabilities and quotes are taken from Open Dental's own manual and site. Dentrix report names and menu paths are drawn from Henry Schein One's official publications (Dentrix Magazine, the Dentrix blog and the Dentrix Developer Portal); exact menu locations can vary by Dentrix version, so confirm against your own install. Lucid Vitals is not affiliated with Open Dental or Dentrix / Henry Schein One.