Every dental owner thinks hygiene is profitable. Most can't prove it. Two virtual accounts make hygiene's monthly contribution visible in real time — not 45 days late.
Every dental owner thinks hygiene is profitable. Most cannot prove it. The hygienist's pay, the chair time, the supply cost, and the revenue all live in different reports. Roll them up at quarter-end and you get a number you do not quite believe. There is a faster way.
In the typical dental group, hygiene revenue is collected from three sources: insurance ACH, patient copay at the front desk, and prophy plan subscriptions. All three deposit into the same operating account that also receives crowns, ortho payments, and cosmetic procedure deposits, the same mixing problem that shows up when patient-pay and insurance cash share one account (opens in a new tab) group-wide. By the time your accountant separates them, you are 45 days out from the chair.
That delay matters because hygiene is a margin business. Small changes in scheduling density, fee schedule, or supply cost compound fast. If you cannot see the margin in real time, you optimize blind.
The fix is small:
Both sit under your root operating account. Lemma's structure makes this a configuration, not a new entity. The bank ledger now reflects hygiene's monthly contribution at any point in the day. Your CFO can answer "is hygiene paying for itself" in 30 seconds.
Solo practice with one hygienist? Skip it. Three or more chairs and a real hygiene panel, the profile of most growing multi-chair dental practices (opens in a new tab)? The setup pays for itself the first month a scheduling change shows up cleanly in the dashboard instead of a 60-day-late spreadsheet.
ACH between virtual accounts is $0. Wires are flat $15. Operating cash earns 1.75% APY across the structure. FDIC coverage runs up to $10M per entity through the IntraFi sweep network, the same terms covered in our full breakdown of dental practice banking (opens in a new tab).