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Happy Wednesday evening everybody! It is a hump day, it’s almost over, and it also happens to be Valentines Day. Happy Valentines Day to all of you!

Last week we talked about dental efficiencies and your inventory budget. We specifically talked about getting to the 5% magic number. Today, we are going to discuss achieving what I call “high-level black belt”, getting from 5% to 4%, or even 3%. So, let’s look into how we get there and discuss the steps you take in a little bit more detail.

So, how do we get from 5% spend on dental supplies to 2.8%, which is pretty much impossible, or even just 4% on dental supplies. After you’re already monitoring all of the expenses, you’re looking at everything you spend on dental supplies, and you know exactly the distributors and the numbers and how much you spend, the number one thing is going to be actually looking at your invoices. It’s something that a lot of people won’t have time for and it’ll be super time consuming, but it’s worth it.

What I mean by “looking at invoices” is, when the order goes out to a distributor and they send you an invoice to charge you, look at the invoice to see what you are actually being charged. So, you can reconcile what you send to the distributor and what comes back to you in the invoice, including the shipping charges. You’d be surprised by how many times we’ve seen that the shipping charges have increased or that the prices are different from what they are supposed to be. Reconciling the invoice is going to be a big and very important step.

You are also going to look at the free goods and specials and not buy any of them. That’s because you are only going to be buying the items that you need at the quantities that you need. For example, if your lead assistant is buying five boxes of gloves and somebody has a promotion where you can buy eight and get two for free, you are only going to be buying five. That means you are going to stay within your budget and not buy any specials. We discuss this a lot because the biggest part of staying in budget is buying what you need and not chasing small-time savings. This means that you don’t end up wasting a full box. For example, if a box of gloves is going to be ten dollars, if you don’t buy the box you save ten dollars instead of the two dollars you’d save via the special. That’s the concept behind it.

It’s understandable to think that you would end up using the boxes you get in the free special, but our recommendation is to not purchase any specials. All of our clients that have an inventory budget of 4% or lower follow this advice.

The last part is staying organized, which can be really hard! This means that you are staying within a system and looking at each invoice. Staying organized and not leaning outside of the course you set out is going to be super critical. These are the dental efficiencies; we’ve covered pretty much all of the major steps. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that can solve all of your problems. You just have to put in the work. Like working out, you’ve got to do pushups to build your biceps.

Thank you all!

[Edited by Matt Fischer]