To buy a dental practice is to buy three things at once: a patient base that may or may not follow you, a room full of equipment of known age, and a lease that decides whether either is worth anything. The seller's broker presents one figure, the asking price, and the buyer has to turn it into the figures that matter to them: what it costs at the keys, what it costs every month, and what the practice earns before the owner is paid. This page walks that translation in the order a lender will ask for it.
Start with collections and patients, not the asking price
The seller's practice management report gives two numbers that put the price in proportion: annual collections and active patients. On the checklist sheet's worked example a $750,000 asking price on $1,000,000 of collections is 75% of collections and $416.67 per active patient, and those ratios are how two practices in different towns get compared on one footing. They are not a valuation, and this site does not offer one; they are the buyer's first sanity check.
Turn the price into cash at the keys and a monthly payment
A practice is rarely bought with cash. The acquisition cost calculator splits the price into the bank's SBA note, the seller's note and the buyer's own money, then adds working capital and closing costs. On its worked example a $450,000 price with the bank at 80% and the seller at 10% needs $110,000 at the keys and $5,727.64 a month across the two notes, against $380,000 of net income before the owner's pay on the checklist example's practice.
Agree the allocation before you sign
The IRS treats the purchase as the sale of each asset, not one thing, and both sides report how the price was split across equipment, supplies, records and goodwill. Agreeing the split in the purchase agreement, with your accountant, is cheaper than discovering after closing that the seller filed a different allocation from yours. The register in Pro keeps the agreed split beside the target so it is there when the return is prepared.
Questions people ask about buy a dental practice
Should I buy a dental practice or start one?
A purchase buys collections from day one and a debt from day one; a start-up buys neither. The calculator shows what the debt costs monthly against the practice's own earnings, which is the honest comparison.
What is the first document to ask for?
Three years of tax returns, because everything else the seller says is checked against them. The production and collections reports by provider come next.
Does Keysvo value the practice?
No. It returns the price ratios and the cost of the funding stack from your figures; what the practice is worth is your valuation and your accountant's question.