Switching From SoftDent to Open Dental? Here's What Actually Happens

If you're a SoftDent office even thinking about making the jump to Open Dental, you've probably already Googled it at midnight. You've read a forum post or two. Maybe you've talked yourself out of it three times because "what if we lose everything."

Here's the truth... you won't lose everything. But you also won't get a perfectly clean, plug-and-play transfer. Some things come over beautifully. Some things need a little love on the other side. And a few things just don't make the trip at all.

We've been in the trenches on real SoftDent-to-Open Dental conversions, so here's what to actually expect, no sugar coating.

What Comes Over Without a Fight

A handful of things convert cleanly, assuming they were set up correctly in SoftDent to begin with:

• Employees transfer well.

• Billing types come over as-is.

• Daily memos convert into Tasks inside Open Dental.

• Your medication list makes the trip too.

Good news, but don't get too comfortable. "Comes over well" still means someone on your team should eyeball it, not assume it's flawless.

What Comes Over... But Needs a Second Look

This is the bulk of the work, and it's where most offices underestimate the timeline.

Providers carry over their Tax ID, PID, and EA license number if those existed in SoftDent, but every single provider record needs verification. Don't assume a clean transfer just because the data showed up.

Doctors convert as Employees, which means someone has to manually hide them in Open Dental after the fact.

Adjustment types come over in bulk... a big, messy bulk. Most of them need to be hidden during cleanup.

Chart conditions, think external resorption, cracked tooth, that kind of thing, don't just work out of the box. Each one has to be manually rebuilt as a dummy code plus a code category before it functions properly.

Then there's the chart button category. A category literally named "SoftDent" comes over holding some of your old explosion codes. Somebody needs to decide what stays, what gets renamed, and what gets folded into standard Open Dental procedure buttons.

And the big one, the thing that eats the most cleanup time: insurance plans and fee schedules. Open Dental creates one fee schedule per plan and one insurance plan per patient, instead of patients sharing a single plan record the way SoftDent handles it. That means duplicate plans, duplicate carriers, and a fee schedule count that balloons fast. This is the single biggest post-conversion project you'll face, so budget real time for it. Not "I'll knock it out during lunch" time. Real time.

What Doesn't Come Over At All

A few things just get left behind, so plan around them instead of discovering them the hard way:

• Appointment types and appointment views don't transfer. You're rebuilding these from scratch in Open Dental.

• Images don't come over, and procedure codes tagged "is hyg" are specifically excluded from the conversion.

• Outstanding claims and preauthorizations don't transfer either. These need to be manually entered in Open Dental before you start billing in the new system.

None of this is a dealbreaker. It's just work you need to know is coming.

Two Things to Handle Before You Flip the Switch

Set aside real cleanup time. We said it above, but it's worth repeating on its own. The insurance plan and fee schedule deduplication is the biggest lift of the whole process. Go in expecting it, not discovering it three weeks post-launch.

💚 Don't pull historical reports from Open Dental. Run anything historical straight out of SoftDent through your conversion date. Open Dental's reporting only reflects data entered from the conversion date forward, so your pre-conversion numbers live in your old system, not your new one.

What Other SoftDent Offices Are Saying

We're not the only ones who've watched this play out. Offices that made the switch after years on SoftDent consistently describe the same thing... the conversion day itself tends to go smoothly, and the real work is the cleanup afterward. One dentist who spent 15 years on SoftDent called leaving it for Open Dental one of the best decisions they'd made for their practice. Another described the actual conversion day as almost anticlimactic, a remote tech, a couple of hours, done. The recurring theme across independent reviews is relief... relief that the software finally works the way their practice actually operates.

The Part Where We Tell You What to Do Next

If you're staring down a SoftDent-to-Open Dental conversion, you don't have to figure out the fee schedule chaos or the chart condition rebuilds on your own. This is exactly the kind of transition we live in every day, and it's exactly why our Conversion Package exists... to walk you through what's coming, fix the workflows as they land, and get your team trained on a system that finally makes sense.

👉SKF Practice Solutions