How to organise orders in a dental laboratory

1. Why orders get lost

An order rarely gets lost because someone didn’t do their job. Most of the time the information is scattered: the form is on one desk, the deadline is in the notebook, the shade arrived on WhatsApp and the payment is noted somewhere else. When you need to answer a simple question (“is Mrs Smith’s case ready?”), you look in three places.

The fix isn’t more attention, it’s a rule: every order has a single place that holds all of its information, from arrival to payment.

2. What an order form must contain

An incomplete order means calls back to the dentist and lost days. When it arrives, check that the order has:

• The clinic and the dentist sending the case, with a contact phone number.
• The patient: a name or a code, enough to identify them without confusion.
• The type of work and the material (for example zirconia crown, E-max veneer, removable denture).
• The teeth, in FDI notation (11–48), ideally marked on a dental chart.
• The shade according to the shade guide used (for example Vita A2), per arch or per area if it differs.
• The impression or scan: what was sent and in what format.
• The try-in date (if any) and the delivery date.
• Notes: special features, photos, specific requests.
• The price, according to the clinic’s price list.

3. One record, with clear statuses

All orders should sit in a single list, not in separate piles on desks. For each order, the status should tell you at a glance where the case is. A simple set that works for most labs:

1. Received: the form has been checked and is complete.
2. In progress: at least one stage has started.
3. At try-in: it went to the dentist for a try-in and is waiting to come back.
4. Completed: ready for delivery.
5. Sent: it has reached the dentist.

More statuses complicate things. Fewer hide important information, such as cases that are out at try-in.

4. Deadlines and try-ins

The delivery date is set when the order arrives, and you work backwards from it: how many stages the case has, how long each takes and when the try-in has to happen. Always leave a buffer for corrections after the try-in.

• Put try-ins and deliveries in a shared calendar, visible to the whole team.
• Check every morning what goes out today and tomorrow.
• Look once a week at cases nearing their deadline that don’t have every stage started.

5. Splitting work between technicians

Split each case into stages (tasks): scanning, design, milling, layering, glazing and so on. Each stage gets an owner. That way you always know who is working on what, what is finished and where a case got stuck.

The benefit also shows up at pay time: if technicians are paid per task, the record of finished stages is the basis for the calculation. It no longer has to be pieced together at the end of the month.

6. Communicating with dentists

• Confirm receipt of the order and the deadline, especially for urgent cases.
• Ask questions on the order, not in private chats: the answer should stay with the case, visible to anyone in the lab.
• Attach photos when something is unclear: a picture shortens a long conversation.
• Announce when the case ships, so the dentist can schedule the patient.

Most calls from dentists are questions about status. If dentists can see the status of their cases themselves, the calls go down.

7. Tracking payments

Link every payment to the orders it covers. Partial payments are the easiest to lose track of: a clinic pays half and the rest is left “for later”. For each clinic you should always know the total ordered, the total collected and the difference.

8. The daily and weekly routine

Every day

• Check new orders: are they complete? Do they have a deadline?
• Look at today’s and tomorrow’s deliveries.
• Update the status of cases that moved forward.
• Record the payments received.

Once a week

• Cases nearing their deadline that don’t have every stage started.
• Cases out at try-in that haven’t come back.
• Clinics with overdue amounts.

Paper, Excel or software?

Everything in this guide can be done on paper, with discipline. Management software, however, does some of the steps automatically: it calculates the price, puts try-ins in the calendar, shows what is late and keeps each clinic’s balance. We compared the three options honestly in a separate article: notebook, Excel or software.

Frequently asked questions