If you run three branches and need them on one screen, Dentao is not the right fit yet. If you need billing, GST and insurance claims inside the same software, also no. This post is the honest list, so you don’t spend a month finding out the hard way.
We have written a lot about why Dentao works for small clinics. This one is the opposite kind of post. Not every clinic should buy every piece of software, no matter how good the demo looks, and a dentist searching for dental software for multi-branch clinics deserves a straight answer, not a sales pitch dressed up as a comparison.
So here is who we did not build this for, and why, followed by who we did.
Does Dentao work for multi-branch clinics?
Not yet. If you have three branches and want one dashboard showing all of them together, bookings, patients, everything, side by side, Dentao does not do that today. Each clinic login sees its own appointments and its own patients. There is no branch switcher, no combined view for an owner sitting at head office watching three locations at once.
For a single clinic, even one with two chairs and two doctors, this is irrelevant. For a group with multiple branches genuinely searching for dental software for multi-branch clinics, it matters, and we would rather say “not yet” plainly than let you discover it in month two.
What about billing and insurance?
Dentao does not do money. No invoices, no GST, no payment collection, no ledger. If billing has to live inside the same software you use for appointments, this is not that software.
Insurance is the same story, just sharper. If insurance claims make up half your revenue and you need the claim forms, the pre-authorisation workflow, the paperwork trail that insurers expect, Dentao has none of it. We built a booking form and a patient record, not a claims department. A clinic that lives on insurance billing needs software built around that workflow first, with appointments as a smaller piece.
Do I need a tooth chart or perio chart today?
If yes, not yet, is the honest answer. Dentao has free-text clinical notes per visit (readable by anyone with the login), a treatment plan list with pending and done states, and file attachments for X-rays and photos. It does not have a visual tooth chart or a perio charting grid. For a periodontist or an orthodontist whose daily record-keeping is built around charting, that gap is not a small one. Think of a clinic doing full periodontal charting on every recall visit: typing that into free text instead of a grid is a downgrade, not a workaround.
Can I get automatic reminders with zero effort?
No, by design. Dentao does not send automatic WhatsApp reminders, SMS blasts, or recall messages on a schedule. There is a Message button on each booking that opens WhatsApp with the patient’s number already loaded, but a human still types and sends it. The reasoning: a message a human typed gets a reply; a message that reads like a template gets ignored or blocked. We cover the logic in more depth in the case for automation-free design.
If your clinic wants zero-touch reminder campaigns running overnight without anyone pressing send, this will feel slow to you. It is slow on purpose.
What if my staff shouldn’t see each other’s work?
There is one login per clinic. The receptionist and the doctor open the same dashboard, see the same bookings, the same patient records. There are no roles, no permission levels, no screen that is hidden from the front desk but visible to the doctor.
For a small clinic this is usually a non-issue; the receptionist already knows who is coming in and the doctor already trusts her with the day. For a bigger setup where ownership wants a wall between what the front desk sees and what the doctor sees, that wall does not exist in Dentao today.
Who Dentao is actually for
Flip every “not yet” above and you get the clinic we built this for. One or two chairs. One location, or a few locations each running their own login without needing a combined view. A dentist and a receptionist, maybe one associate. Money handled outside the software, on paper or in whatever billing tool you already use. Records that need to answer “who’s coming today” and “what did we do last time”, not a full periodontal chart.
If that describes your clinic more than it describes a hospital wing, you are the clinic Dentao was built for. We go into the two-chair thinking behind that choice in dental clinic software built for small clinics, and the trade-off of not naming a price per feature in what Dentao does not do.
If your real problems are “who’s coming” and “who is this patient”, you’re who this was built for; if your real problems are billing, insurance forms, or three branches on one screen, keep looking.
Where Dentao fits
Dentao fits the clinic that books by date on a three-field public form, runs the day off a dashboard with five status counters, and keeps one record per patient under the phone number: visit history, free-text notes, a treatment plan list, and attachments for X-rays. One login, one price shape, no modules to turn on. It is not trying to be hospital software with a dental skin, and it is not trying to be an insurance platform. It does the two jobs a small clinic actually repeats every day: who’s coming, and who is this.
We would rather lose you at this page than lose you at month two.
Try Dentao on your clinic at dentao.in.
Dentao is a booking link and a patient record for one- and two-chair clinics. Three fields for the patient, one dashboard for the desk, one file per phone number. Try Dentao on your clinic →