Associates and hygienists run on production, assistants and the front desk run hourly, and every clinician carries a license that expires on its own clock. WageTime is payroll built for how a dental practice actually pays people, in one location or several.
The U.S. has about 135,000 dental practices employing more than a million people, and most are small offices where the person running payroll also runs the front desk (US Census; BLS). That office manager reconciles associate and hygienist production against clock hours, watches a shoebox of credentials, and, more and more often, does it across two or three locations at once.
Your associate is on 30% of collections, the hygienist is base hourly plus a production bonus, and the numbers come off the practice-management report into a spreadsheet, then get re-typed into payroll. Change a percentage, add a new hygienist, or close the month, and the whole calculation is rebuilt by hand, with a rounding error nobody catches until the doctor asks.
A hygienist paid mostly on production has a light week, cancellations, a holiday, a slow schedule, and the production dollars don’t clear minimum wage for the hours actually worked. The practice owes the difference, and the person running payroll is supposed to catch it by eye, every period, for every production-paid clinician.
The dental license, the DEA registration, the radiology permit, the hygienist’s local-anesthesia cert, and everyone’s CPR card all renew on different dates. Today that lives on a sticky note or a shared calendar, and a lapsed license worked is a board-reportable problem, not a paperwork one, discovered the week the renewal was already due.
Dentistry is consolidating: private-practice ownership has fallen from about 85% of dentists in 2005 to roughly 73% today, and DSO-affiliated practice has more than doubled over the past decade to about 16% (ADA Health Policy Institute). The second location gets its own entity and EIN, a doctor works both, and now you run two payrolls, two sets of filings, and a Social Security wage base counted twice.
The practice-management system is locked down and the team signs HIPAA training every year, but staff Social Security numbers, direct-deposit details, and pay live in a spreadsheet and an email thread. The vendor question on every demo, do you handle our data the way we have to handle a patient’s, rarely has a clean answer.
WageTime treats production pay as configuration, not spreadsheet math. An associate’s percentage of collections and a hygienist’s base-plus-production are set up once as earning codes and run inside payroll every period, so the front-desk spreadsheet, and the rounding error in it, retires.
Replaces the production spreadsheet, and the minimum-wage check done by eye.
WageTime tracks every credential on the clinician’s record with its own renewal date, so a license or permit is renewed before it lapses instead of after. Categories are configured to the practice, from DEA registrations to local-anesthesia permits.
| Employee | Credential | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dr. A. NguyenExpires Sep 12 | DEA registration | 57 days |
| Dr. S. PatelExpires Mar 31 | State dental license | Current |
| R. Ortiz, RDHExpires Aug 04 | Radiography cert | 18 days |
| T. Boyd, RDHExpires Dec 01 | CPR/BLS card | Current |
| M. Ellis, EFDAExpires Jan 15 | Local-anesthesia permit | Current |
Replaces the sticky note, and the license that lapsed before anyone noticed.
WageTime runs each location under its own EIN and its own filings, all under one login. A doctor working across related qualifying entities can run under a common-paymaster arrangement, one W-2 and FICA wage base; whether your group qualifies is a question for its CPA.
| Location | Gross pay | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Riverside DentalEIN 1 · 11 on payroll | $58,400.00 | Filed |
| Lakeside OrthoEIN 2 · 8 on payroll | $47,900.00 | Filed |
| Summit Oral SurgeryEIN 3 · 6 on payroll | $52,150.00 | Filed |
| Dr. Nguyen2 sites · common paymaster | one W-2 | Reviewed |
Replaces the second payroll login, and the wage base counted twice.
With pay codes, not manual adjustments: WageTime pays the Saturday hygiene shift and the late Thursday operatory their premium automatically. Scheduling is built in too, so a floating hygienist covering two offices isn’t booked in both at once.
| Employee | Hours | Differential |
|---|---|---|
| R. Ortiz, RDHSaturday hygiene | 8.0 | +$6.00/hr |
| T. Boyd, RDHThursday evening | 10.0 | +$4.00/hr |
| M. Ellis, EFDASaturday assist | 8.0 | +$3.00/hr |
| K. Diazfront desk · weekday shift | 40.0 | None |
Replaces the manual weekend premium, and the hygienist booked in two chairs at once.
Benefits and retirement keep pace with a team that adds an associate mid-year: elections sync to deductions every cycle, and WageTime enforces the annual IRS limits on the 401(k) automatically. No spreadsheet sits between a coverage change and the check.
| Employee | Per pay | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dr. S. Patel401(k) elective | $1,375.00 | Capped |
| R. Ortiz, RDHMedical + dental | $184.50 | Synced |
| T. Boyd, RDH401(k) 6% + match | $198.00 | Synced |
| M. Ellis, EFDAVision + FSA | $62.00 | Synced |
Replaces the deduction re-key, and the deferral that ran past the IRS cap.
Full-service payroll is $10 a month per person paid that month, plus $50 a month per company, with unlimited runs. No long-term contracts, no per-run charges.
Off-cycle runs and bonuses cost nothing extra. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
Example: 50 people paid × $10 + $50 company = $550 for the month
HR & hiring, onboarding, PTO, time tracking, benefits, and workers’ comp are optional add-ons, priced separately when you’re ready.
See a demoSet the production rule once as an earning code, a percentage of collections for an associate, a base hourly rate plus a production percentage for a hygienist, and WageTime runs it every period. Flat-amount, per-unit, and tiered commission types are all supported, so different splits for different providers live side by side. The production dollars land on the same check as hourly hours, taxes, and deductions, with no separate spreadsheet.
WageTime runs minimum-wage processing at the federal, state, and local level, measuring production pay against the wage floor for the hours actually worked. When a slow week leaves a production-paid clinician short, the run flags it and applies the difference rather than leaving the office manager to catch it by eye. How the wage-and-hour rules apply to your practice is a question for you and your advisor; WageTime provides the mechanism, not legal advice.
Every credential sits on the employee record with its own renewal date and the document stored: state dental and hygiene licenses, DEA registrations, radiology and radiography certifications, local-anesthesia permits, and CPR or BLS cards. Recurring alerts fire at 30, 60, and 90 days before each one expires, and the office manager sees everything renewing this quarter across the team in one view. Categories are configured to your practice.
Yes. Run each location under its own EIN with its own filings, all from one login, and report per location or consolidated across the group. Pay frequency is configured per entity, so different offices can run different calendars. A doctor who works across related entities that qualify can be handled under a common-paymaster arrangement, one W-2 and one FICA wage base; whether your group qualifies is a question for your CPA. Tell us your entity structure on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact setup.
Pay frequency is configuration, weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, or monthly, and each entity in a group can run its own calendar with its own overtime period and accruals. Practices commonly run the hourly team biweekly and the doctors semi-monthly. Bring your entity structure and how you want to split the doctors from the hourly team to the demo, and we’ll confirm the exact setup for your practice.
The platform behind WageTime is SOC 2 Type II audited and ISO 27001/27018 certified, with safeguards built for handling HIPAA-covered data, and business and employee data is protected end to end with bank-level encryption. Dental practices routinely ask about business associate agreements on the demo, so bring the question and we’ll walk through how your data is handled. WageTime describes its security posture and does not represent any specific compliance outcome for your practice.
$50 a month for the practice plus $10 per person actually paid that month, with unlimited payroll runs. Off-cycle runs, bonuses, and corrections cost nothing extra, every federal, state, and local tax is filed automatically, and year-end W-2s and 1099s are included. There are no long-term contracts and you can cancel anytime. A practice that adds an associate or a second location pays for who was paid, not a flat per-seat block.
One associate or hygienist paid on production, your credential list, and your entity structure. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo practice: you’ll watch a production split run with minimum-wage processing, see the credential tracker flag a renewal, and see two locations file under one login.
Book a 20-minute demo