Predicting Cash Flow, Rise of COFO, and Dashboards

💡 Predicting Cash Flow When Revenue Swings Like a Pendulum

On-demand pricing has emerged as a powerful growth lever for dental practices—aligning fees directly to utilization and keeping patients happy. But that same flexibility can wreak havoc on cash-flow forecasting: one slow week or unexpected surge in usage and your projections shift overnight. Variable, user-based fees turn steady revenue streams into roller-coaster rides, forcing finance teams into reactive fire drills instead of proactive planning. The antidote? Close collaboration between clinical, operations, and finance—backed by real-time analytics, dynamic forecasting models, and a disciplined collections process—to turn unpredictable cash leaks into controlled, sustainable growth. 🌱

Key Takeaway:

• On-demand models make cash flow forecasting tough due to pricing variability.

• The practice and Finance teams must work together to track patient behavior and payment patterns.

• Reducing uncertainty is key to revenue optimization and happier customers.

• For dental CFOs, regular review and a healthy relationship with your collections process will turn cash leaks into controlled irrigation for growth. 🌱

💼 The Rise of the COFO: When Your CFO Role Grows Muscles

This week, Salesforce formally unveiled the COFO — Chief Operating & Financial Officer — signaling how automation and modern ERPs are dissolving the line between finance and operations. For dental groups and DSOs, a COFO can fuse forecasting, supply-chain oversight, staffing, and clinic logistics under one hybrid leader, driving faster, more cohesive decision-making. Yet broadening the CFO mandate to include process design and people management demands robust data platforms, dynamic reporting, and cross-team collaboration to avoid scope creep.

Key Takeaway:

• If your CFO also owns supply-chain and staffing, how would that reshape budgeting cycles and vendor negotiations?

• Can a finance leader maintain deep P&L rigor while driving day-to-day clinic operations and team dynamics?

• Data demands: What real-time dashboards and cross-team metrics would a COFO need to make decisions on the fly?

🦷 Dental Dashboards: Pitfalls and Payoffs

Data is the lifeblood of modern dental practices—but getting clean, timely inputs (think: timesheets, billing codes) feels impossible. Building dashboards that surface true performance (not just coffee-refill counts) is an art: do it poorly, and you’re flying blind; do it right, and you catch issues before they spiral. Start with core financials (P&L, balance sheet), lean on tools like Power Query for data cleaning, define clear KPIs with period filters—and watch quarter-end surprises fade away.

Details

• Start simple: Import core financials (P&L, balance sheet), then build.

• Invest in data cleaning tools; Power Query is a game-changer.

• Define KPIs and make sure you can filter by time periods for easy period-on-period review.

• Good dashboards mean fewer nasty surprises come quarter-end.

Toolbox

Email me [email protected] for the excel sheet of the template.

Thank you for your time!

Best,
- Faliam team