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Open Dental Cheat Sheet for Dental Front Office Staff
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Ezra Angelo
- • May 23, 2026
This cheat sheet covers the most common Open Dental front office tasks, keyboard shortcuts, and workflow sequences that front desk staff ask about most frequently. Open Dental is one of the most flexible and customizable practice management platforms available, which means new staff members sometimes find the interface less immediately intuitive than more opinionated systems. These are the core workflows every front office team member should know cold.
Ekim IT Solutions is a certified Open Dental vendor partner and the dental-exclusive IT provider supporting Open Dental practices across Maine, New England, Tampa Bay, and nationally.
Open Dental’s most powerful features are often hidden behind right-click menus and module-specific keyboard shortcuts that are not visible on screen.
Patient Search and Record Access
The fastest way to find a patient in Open Dental is the Patient Select window, opened with Ctrl+P from anywhere in the program. Type the first few letters of the last name and the list filters immediately. Press Enter to open the highlighted patient or double-click to select. The patient search also accepts phone number partial matches, which is useful when a patient calls and does not know how their name is spelled in the system. From the Patient Select window, pressing F5 opens the patient’s appointment list directly without navigating through the main schedule.
Scheduling Essentials
The most important scheduling shortcuts and workflows in Open Dental.
Double-click any open time slot on the Appointments module to open the appointment dialog. Select the appointment type, assign the provider and operatory, and confirm the time. If the patient does not have a future appointment, Open Dental will prompt to schedule one when closing the patient chart.
Click and hold an appointment block, then drag it to the new time slot. Right-clicking an appointment block shows options to cut, copy, set as pinboard, or reschedule. The pinboard holds an appointment while you find a new slot without losing the appointment data.
Open Dental’s Recall module tracks hygiene recare by patient. From the Appointments module, pressing F3 opens the Recall List filtered by overdue patients. Double-clicking a patient in the Recall List opens their appointment dialog pre-populated with the recare appointment type.
Insurance and Billing Shortcuts
To verify a patient’s insurance information quickly, open the patient chart and click the Insurance button in the left panel. This shows all active insurance plans with group numbers, subscriber IDs, and benefit year details. To run a predetermination or pre-authorization, go to the Treatment Plan module, select the procedures, right-click, and choose Send Predetermination. Open Dental will generate the claim form pre-populated with the selected procedures.
To post a payment, open the patient account by pressing F7 or clicking Account in the patient chart. Click Payment to open the payment dialog. Select the payment type, enter the amount, and apply it to the outstanding balances in the payment allocation window. Open Dental allocates payments to the oldest balances first by default, but individual balance allocation can be overridden manually.
End of Day Checklist
Check off each item before closing out the business day.
Next day’s schedule confirmed complete, with all appointment slots filled or intentionally left open
All payments received that day posted, with the daily production report matching the batch
Task list checked for any outstanding items flagged for follow-up
Nightly backup confirmed scheduled or running, with the backup status indicator showing a successful backup
Frequently Asked Questions
Ekim IT Solutions is a certified Open Dental vendor partner supporting Open Dental practices across Maine, New England, Tampa Bay, and nationally. We can help your front office team get comfortable with the core workflows faster, and handle anything that trips them up along the way.
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- • May 23, 2026
