How to run a leaner practice and keep more of what you earn.
Written by a Chartered Accountant who co-owns an independent clinic — so it is the arithmetic of a real practice, not a textbook. No gated PDFs, no webinars, no upsell at the end of paragraph three.
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What 162 clinics actually charge for a treatment room
We read 16,751 UK clinic websites to find every practice advertising a room to let. Only 32 publish a price. Here is what they charge, why the hourly market splits in two, and why a day is not eight hours.
Read itWhat should you charge to rent out a treatment room?
A room costs you roughly £56 a day whether anyone is in it or not. Here is the arithmetic that turns an empty Tuesday into contribution — and the VAT and employment-status traps that cost more than the rent.
The room utilisation number nobody calculates
Premises cost is fixed, so every unused room-hour is cost with no revenue against it — and no line in your accounts says so. How to measure utilisation in twenty minutes, and the three things you can do about a low number.
What do other dental practices actually pay?
The question every owner has and almost none can answer. What is comparable today without any benchmark, what is not and why, and what to do about the gap in the meantime.
How independent vets compete with corporate groups on cost
Around 60% of UK veterinary premises are corporate-owned. The buying gap is real, but it is not evenly spread — and the part you can close on your own is bigger than most owners assume.
How to check if you are overpaying on card fees
Fifteen minutes, one statement and a calculator settles it. The order to work through a merchant statement, the eight things that turn out to be wrong, and how to decide whether acting is worth it.
Blended, interchange++ or fixed: which card pricing suits a practice
Three quotes, three different pricing structures, and no way to compare them without knowing which is which. What each one costs a practice, and the five things to check before signing.
Card machine costs: rent, buy or bundle
A terminal costs £20 to £40 a month to rent or £150 to £400 to buy. The gap is not the interesting part — what the rental agreement does to your ability to renegotiate everything else is.
What should a practice pay in card fees?
Most UK practices should be paying between 0.6% and 1.4% of card turnover, all in. How to work out your own effective rate from one statement, and what to do if it lands on the wrong side of that.
The cheapest supplier can cost the most
A low quote stops being cheap when missed collections, downtime, weak support or a painful handover land inside the practice. How SupplyIndex weighs service alongside price.
Where margin quietly leaks away
Nobody loses a practice to one bad decision. They lose margin to eleven small ones that renew on their own, in a month nobody was looking. Here is where to look, in order.
The April cost stack: what 2026/27 actually adds to your wage bill
The National Living Wage, employer NI and the £5,000 threshold, worked through for a real practice payroll — plus the one relief most small practices forget to claim.
Paying yourself tax-efficiently as a practice owner
Salary, dividends and the 2026/27 rate rise. How the split actually works, why the old rule of thumb moved this April, and the traps that cost owners more than the tax did.
Pricing without losing patients
Why the fee rise you are afraid of is smaller than you think, why the ones that go wrong go wrong in the same way, and what to do instead when you cannot move price at all.
What the big chains do that you can too
A corporate group is not smarter than you. It has four habits you can copy this quarter without hiring anyone — and one you cannot, which is the whole reason we exist.
Get each one as it lands
One practical note at a time on running a leaner practice. No more than one a fortnight, and every article stays free on this page.
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Why any of this matters: the case for staying independent.