Hourly Goal Calculator for Dentists

Your numbers

Estimates are fine. You can refine later.

Annual practice overhead iEverything it costs to run your practice for a year — staff wages, rent, supplies, lab bills, equipment, marketing, insurance. Do not include what you pay yourself.

Annual collections (what you bring in)

Overhead percentage iThe share of collections eaten by expenses. The dental average is around 60–65%. Use 60% if you're not sure. %

Income you want to take home iWhat you want to earn as the owner for the year — your pay plus profit. This is the goal on top of just breaking even.

Your clinical hours per year iHours you personally spend in a patient's chair producing dentistry over a year. This excludes hygiene-only and admin time.

Days / week

Weeks / year

Hours / day

Working chair days, after vacation and CE.

My hygiene department also produces revenue

Annual hygiene production iWhat your hygiene department produces in a year. Hygiene revenue helps cover overhead, which lowers what your own chair has to carry — giving you a more accurate doctor-hour goal.

Your hourly goal

Updates as you type.

Break-even hourly rate iProduce less than this per chair hour and the practice loses money on that hour. It's your floor — not your goal.

$—

The floor. Below this, an hour of your time costs you money.

Target production per hour

$— / chair hour

Produce this per chair hour to cover overhead and hit your income goal.

That works out to

$— per clinical day · $— produced per year

For context: most dentists produce $475–$575 per hour; high performers exceed $700. If your target lands far above the top of that range, revisit your inputs or your schedule.

This is the number CaseFee Pro uses to price every cosmetic, full-arch, and implant case — fairly for the patient, profitably for you.

Put your number to work — claim a Founder spot →

Practice with associates? Each provider sets their own hourly goal inside CaseFee Pro.

How this is calculated

Your hourly goal is the production per chair hour needed to cover what it costs to run the practice and earn the income you want, spread across the hours you actually work.

Break-even hourly rate = Annual overhead ÷ Your clinical hours per year

Target hourly goal = (Annual overhead + Desired income) ÷ Your clinical hours per year

Clinical hours come from Days/week × Weeks/year × Hours/day — your real chair time after vacation and CE.

If hygiene produces revenue: hygiene income covers part of your overhead, so it's subtracted before the doctor-hour math, which keeps your own number from being overstated:

Target = (Annual overhead + Desired income − Hygiene production) ÷ Your clinical hours

A worked example: $600,000 overhead + $350,000 desired income = $950,000 to produce. Across 1,500 clinical hours, that's about $633/hour. Break-even alone is $600,000 ÷ 1,500 = $400/hour.

Benchmarks and the direct-operating-cost-per-hour method are drawn from dental practice-management sources including Dental Economics, DentistryIQ, and eAssist. Every practice differs — treat the output as a well-grounded starting point, not gospel. Work with your accountant to confirm your overhead figure.

What should you produce per hour?

Your numbers

Your hourly goal