Supply costs are one of the most controllable categories in a dental practice budget, but only when someone is actually tracking them. For many practices, mid-year is the moment they realize supply spend has quietly drifted above benchmark without anyone noticing. By the time it shows up on a year-end report, months of unnecessary spending have already happened.
An audit doesn't have to be a big project. It's a structured look at what you're spending, what's sitting on your shelves, and whether your ordering process is working as well as it should. Here's how to run one.
Start with your supply spend percentage
Before touching a single shelf, pull your supply costs for the year to date and calculate them as a percentage of your gross collections. Supply costs should run at approximately 5% to 7% of collections. A practice collecting $1 million annually that's running at 9% supply spend is overpaying by roughly $20,000 to $30,000 a year.
If you're above the benchmark, the most common causes are:
- Ordering from too many vendors, which fragments spend and makes it harder to track
- No par levels, leading to panic ordering at premium pricing
- Expired or overstocked products sitting unused
- No single person owning the ordering process
Knowing which of these applies to your practice tells you exactly where to focus.
Walk the supply room
A physical audit is the fastest way to understand what's actually happening. Schedule monthly cycle counts and biannual full audits, covering every clinical zone including operatories, sterilization, hygiene bays, and central supply.
As you walk through, look for:
Expired or near-expiry items. Pull anything expiring within the next 60 days and flag it for priority use. Expired inventory is one of the most common sources of avoidable supply waste in dental practices
Duplicate products. If you have three different brands of the same item because different staff members ordered what they preferred, that's a standardization problem. A consolidated product formulary, one approved brand per category, reduces SKU count, simplifies reordering, and often lowers cost.
Overstocked items. Excess stock ties up cash and increases the risk of expiry waste. If you have more than a 60-day supply of anything that isn't a fast-moving consumable, adjust your next order accordingly.
Items with no clear home Supplies without a designated storage location get lost, forgotten, or reordered unnecessarily. A one-bin-one-SKU rule, each item has exactly one labeled location, eliminates mid-procedure hunting and accidental duplicates.
Set or reset your par levels
Par levels are the single most effective tool for keeping supply costs in check. A par level is the minimum quantity on hand that triggers a reorder, not a restock, but a flag to order before you run out.
To set a par level for any item, calculate your average usage per week, multiply by your reorder lead time, and add a small buffer for demand spikes. For a high-turnover item like gloves, that might be a two-week supply. For a slower-moving item like impression material, one week may be enough.
Once par levels are set, review them quarterly, or any time your procedure volume or product mix changes significantly. Heading into the fall patient surge is exactly the right moment to check whether your current levels still reflect how busy your practice actually is.
Assign ownership and consolidate vendors
Two process questions that make everything else easier:
Who owns ordering? If the answer is "everyone" or "whoever notices we're low," that's a problem. Shared responsibility leads to duplicate orders, missed restocks, and no accountability when spend drifts. One person should own the ordering process, with a clear cadence, weekly or biweekly, and a consolidated order rather than multiple small purchases.
How many vendors are you using? Ordering from multiple suppliers fragments your spend, increases administrative time, and makes it harder to track costs month over month. Consolidating to a single trusted supplier with a broad catalogue is one of the fastest ways to bring supply costs back into benchmark range.
At Frontier Dental Supply, dental professionals get access to over 40,000 products from over 100 trusted brands, with free shipping on most orders. One supplier, one order, and one line item on your report that's easy to track and manage.
