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Prices go up January 1, 2027 — register now to lock in today's price for life. See pricing
Open Dental stays your ledger and your system of record. Intake.Dental connects through Open Dental's published API with real-time sync, takes the card payment, and writes the result into the patient's account the way your front desk would enter it by hand. It does not replace Open Dental's Account module, keep a second ledger you have to balance, or change your pay types. Funds go directly to your bank.
Staff can start a card checkout at the front desk from the dashboard, or send a pay link by text, email or both. The patient opens the link on their phone and pays without creating an account. Membership plans bill dues from the patient's saved card.
Each payment is written to Open Dental as a payment on the patient's chart, with the amount, the date and a payment note that carries our reference. We read your office's own pay type list and use your card type (Credit Card, Visa/MC or similar) for card payments. We never pick a financing pay type for a card payment. If Open Dental's pay type list can't be read at that moment, nothing posts and the payment is retried, so a card payment never lands as Check. Before every post we look for our reference in the patient's recent Open Dental payments, so a retry or a repeated payment notice never posts the same payment twice.
If your ERAs (835s) come in through Intake.Dental, each paid line posts to the matching claim procedure in Open Dental: insurance paid, write-off and deductible, marked received, then read back to confirm it landed. Staff post from the ERA worklist, or the office can turn on automatic ERA posting. A claim procedure that already has an insurance payment on it is never overwritten. For a scanned third-party payment advice, we extract every line, match it to the patient's claim using the claim number, paid amount or service date, check that match against Open Dental again, and then post it to the claim procedure. Lines we can't match with certainty, and claim-level payments that cover several procedures on one claim, are left for your team to post in Open Dental.
Failed posts are retried automatically. If a payment still can't post (for example, no matching Open Dental chart, or your Open Dental API key lacks a permission), your office gets an email that says what to enter. A refund posts only when its original payment reached Open Dental; if it didn't, the email tells your team to enter the refund the same way they entered the original.
If your office is already connected to Open Dental through us, payments need no extra connection. If not, setup takes about five minutes. We issue your API key from the dashboard. In Open Dental you go to Setup > Advanced Setup > API, enable the API and use Add Key to paste it in. Open Dental's eConnector serves the API from your own server, so it has to be running. There is no direct database access, no VPN and nothing to install. Then connect the bank account your payments are paid out to, and check that your Open Dental pay type list has a card type such as Credit Card. Payments & Membership is a $99/month add-on that requires Complete Automation, and it is included in Practice Autopilot.
Yes. Card payments, text-to-pay links, in-office checkout and membership dues post to the patient's Open Dental ledger as a payment, with no one keying them in. Each one carries a reference in the payment note, and we check for that reference before posting, so the same payment never posts twice.
Staff send a pay link by text, email or both from the dashboard. The patient pays on their phone, the payment is recorded right away, and it posts to their Open Dental ledger in the background. If Open Dental can't be reached at that moment, the post is retried. If it still can't post, your office is emailed to enter it.
Your own card pay type. We read your pay type list in Open Dental and pick the card entry, such as Credit Card or Visa/MC. We never use a financing pay type for a card payment. If the list can't be read, nothing posts until it can, so a card payment is never filed as Check.
No, that is what the reference is for. Before every post, we read the patient's recent Open Dental payments for our reference. If it is already there, we don't post again. A repeated payment notice from the card processor is also recognized and recorded once.
A refund posts to the patient's Open Dental ledger as a negative payment, with a note naming the original. It only posts when the original payment reached Open Dental. If the original never posted, your office gets an email to enter the refund the same way they entered the original.
Yes, if your ERAs (835s) come in through Intake.Dental. Each paid line posts to the matching claim procedure as insurance paid, write-off and deductible, is set to received, and is read back to confirm. Staff post from the ERA worklist, or the office can turn on automatic posting. Insurance money is never booked as a patient payment.
Yes, with limits. Upload the payment advice and we extract every line. We match each line to the patient's claim using the claim number, paid amount or service date, and check that match against Open Dental again before posting it to the claim procedure. Lines we can't match with certainty, and a claim-level payment that covers several procedures on one claim, are left for your team to post in Open Dental.
Yes. Membership dues are charged to the patient's saved card and post to the Open Dental ledger as a payment. Member discounts are recorded on every visit and post as a Discount adjustment when your Open Dental API permissions allow adjustments. If they don't, your office is emailed the exact adjustment to enter.
No. Funds go directly to your bank. Intake.Dental records the payment and writes it into Open Dental, and your deposits come from the card processor.
No. Open Dental's per-location API fee is billed to us as the developer, not to your office. You pay the published Intake.Dental price.
We have not yet connected an office on Open Dental Cloud (the version Open Dental hosts), so we cannot promise it today. If you are on Open Dental Cloud, talk to us before you sign up and we will check it with you first.
If you run Open Dental and want card payments, text-to-pay and membership dues to land in the patient's account without retyping, this is what it does. Each payment posts to the Open Dental ledger under your Credit Card pay type, with a reference that prevents double posting. ERA insurance payments post to the claim procedure, not the patient's account. Anything that can't post is emailed to your office to reconcile. Open Dental stays your ledger, with real-time sync through its published API.
Open Dental is a trademark of Open Dental Software, Inc. Intake.Dental is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Open Dental Software, Inc.
Take a card at the front desk, text a patient a link to pay, or bill membership dues, and the payment posts to the patient's Open Dental ledger as a real payment. Nobody keys it in twice. It goes in under your own Credit Card pay type, with a reference in the payment note so a retry never posts the same payment twice. A refund posts back as a negative payment once its original payment is in Open Dental. Insurance money stays separate: ERA (835) payments post to the matching claim procedure in Open Dental, never to the patient's account. Anything that can't post automatically is emailed to your office to reconcile, so nothing is dropped silently.
