Supplies percentage

Supplies percentage is dental supply spending (gloves, impression material, cements, disposables, everything consumed chairside) divided by collections for the same period. Ryan's healthy range is 5–6% of collections, and it is one of the more stable overhead categories in a practice; a spike here usually has a specific, findable cause rather than a slow, mysterious drift.

Common causes of a high supplies percentage include over-ordering without an inventory system, a case mix that has shifted toward a more supply-intensive procedure without the fee schedule adjusting accordingly, or simply not shopping the practice's supplier contracts in years while list prices have crept up. Because the category is small relative to staff or lab, it rarely single-handedly breaks a practice's overhead, but a line running two or three points above its healthy band is still real money, and it compounds every month.

Review it against the range quarterly, alongside lab fee percentage, since the two variable-cost lines together determine most of a practice's contribution margin and directly feed the break-even calculation: a supplies percentage running high pushes break-even production higher whether or not anyone notices the connection.