Dental practice management software: what to build alongside the approved system

The Vitale chain, Ségur, and imaging stay with the approved publisher, and nobody will take them over. Quote follow-up, chair use, the prosthetics lab, and checkup reminders live in spreadsheets. That is where a tool under your control has room.

Dental practice management software costs €139 including tax per month per practitioner at Doctolib for patient management alone (pricing page consulted September 2, 2026), while Julie and LOGOSw, the French market's two established publishers, display no price. DREES counts 47,600 practising dental surgeons as of January 1, 2025.

What approved software handles that a homemade tool will not

Three components remain closed. Billing Assurance Maladie requires software certified by the Centre national de dépôt et d'agrément: carte Vitale, electronic treatment forms, electronic transmission, NOEMIE responses, and SCOR supporting documents. Ségur listing adds a second component, with dentistry one of wave 2's three new tracks: practice software must communicate with Mon espace santé, the shared medical record, the national health identity, and secure health messaging, and that listing triggers funding. The third is imaging: sensors, panoramic systems, and cone beam equipment speak their manufacturers' formats, and a homemade tool does not control an X-ray generator. HDS-certified hosting is also required whenever records or images are stored online, under Article L.1111-8 of the French Public Health Code, the same requirement shaping the debate about healthcare professionals' data.

What practitioners say about software they pay for

Reviews are scarce in this market, which deserves saying before quoting anything: no mainstream review platform lists French dental publishers, and Julie's Capterra entry has only two reviews, both glowing. The frankest comments come from the professional Eugenol forum thread 'Which dental software to choose', all dated July 2023. Julie is described as 'an extremely rigid, overcomplicated system, outdated in many respects' (Gabzou, July 10, 2023). A colleague writes of Logos: 'recurring bugs left unfixed despite multiple requests' (Ulysse90, July 11, 2023). A third dismisses the entire category: 'Dental software in France is all very bad' (king_zoulou, July 11, 2023). Three voices in one thread, three years old, in a market charging per practitioner that nobody publicly compares.

The five tracking jobs that end up in a spreadsheet

Quote tracking comes first: every issued quote with its date, amount, proposed procedure, follow-ups at day 15 and day 45, and conversion rate by practitioner and treatment type. Then chair management: actual occupancy per chair, average duration learned from past appointments, detected scheduling gaps, and waitlisted patients proposed to fill them. The prosthetics lab, with promised and received dates, adjustments, per-item cost, and a warning the day before when the item has not arrived. Maintenance reminders: annual checkups, scaling, periodontal and implant follow-up, with a list of patients absent from follow-up for over eighteen months. Finally, the financial dashboard by practitioner and associate: share of procedures outside the fee schedule, fee-sharing payments, unpaid patient balances, and material costs per procedure.

The dated regulatory requirement

Since September 1, 2026, every VAT-taxable business must be able to receive an electronic invoice; issuance becomes mandatory for SMEs and microbusinesses on September 1, 2027 (France Num, guide updated August 17, 2026). For a dental practice, this concerns prosthetics labs, dental suppliers, and organisations, not bills given to patients. An emailed PDF is not an electronic invoice under Article 289 bis of the French General Tax Code. A custom tool produces and stores invoicing data, then sends it to an approved platform responsible for issuance; it does not become that platform itself. Check your circumstances with your accountant.

The quote handed over at the chair, and what happens to it

Take a treatment quote handed over on a Tuesday: a printed sheet, an amount, a signature, a copy in the file. It leaves the software and dies there. Described to an agent team, that same quote becomes a dated row with a practitioner, procedure, expected response, two scheduled follow-ups, and a conversion rate visible by quarter. Margaux, the agent leading scoping, will ask what happens to a rejected quote, one accepted halfway, or one a patient brings back two years later. Victor writes your answers into a French requirements document you correct before any code exists. The AI budget depends on the assistant, its plan and the work requested. Our measured AI spending covers specific tests and does not set this tool's price. Also budget for your approval time, any hosting, external services and maintenance. Maestro organises this work without a terminal and remains free during its invitation-only beta.

Where to start

Spend a late afternoon with your assistant and ask them to bring out everything maintained outside the software: the follow-up notebook, prosthetics spreadsheet, prior-approval reminders. What lands on the table is the first draft of your specification, written before you and without a computing term. Keep the approved software for the Vitale chain and imaging, and build alongside it by reading its exports rather than trying to replace it. The reasoning applies to other regulated professions, and also to physiotherapists or osteopaths, whose practices depend on fewer approved components.