Once you have built your three tiers in SmilePass, there is one more step that turns them from a price list into a working discount: your practice management software needs a matching fee schedule for each tier. This guide is the companion to How to Build Good-Better-Best Membership Tiers in SmilePass — that one sets up the plans and the billing, this one sets up the clinical pricing behind them. For the full range of plan structures, see our main guide, Example Dental Membership Plans.
The good news: your software already does this every day.
The idea: a tier is just another fee schedule
Every health fund you accept has its own fee schedule. HCF charges one set of fees, Bupa another, and your software knows which list to use the moment you pick the fund. A membership tier works the same way — it is simply another schedule, except this one is yours to set.
So you keep your standard, full-fee schedule as the default, and you add one extra schedule for each tier. Each tier schedule is a copy of your standard fees with discounts applied to the item ranges that tier is meant to cover. When a patient joins a tier in SmilePass, you assign them that tier's schedule in your software, and the right fee flows onto every invoice from then on.
Three tiers means three schedules, sitting alongside your standard one.
What you are building
The tiers deepen as you go up. Lower tiers discount the everyday items; higher tiers carry those discounts and add the bigger work on top.
Essential (Tier 1) | Standard (Tier 2) | Premium (Tier 3) | |
|---|---|---|---|
Diagnostic — exams, x-rays (011–014, 022, 037) | Essential fee | Standard fee | Premium fee |
Preventive — clean, fluoride, OHI, sealants (114, 115, 121, 131, 141) | Essential fee | Standard fee | Premium fee |
Restorative — fillings (511, 521, 531 …) | Practice fee | Standard fee | Premium fee |
Endodontics — root canal therapy (4xx) | Practice fee | Practice fee | Premium fee |
Crown & bridge — crowns, bridges (613, 615, 643 …) | Practice fee | Practice fee | Premium fee |
Implants — surgical and implant-retained (6xx) | Practice fee | Practice fee | Premium fee |
Example discount applied | up to ~5% for preventive | up to ~8% for preventive + restorative | up to ~10% |
Item numbers, ranges and discounts are examples — set your own.
What each tier discounts
Essential — the prevention tier. Discount the diagnostic and preventive items only: examinations, x-rays, scale and clean, fluoride, oral hygiene instruction and sealants. Everything else stays at the standard fee. This is the schedule most members will be on.
Standard — prevention plus fillings. Carry over the preventive discounts and add the restorative range (5xx) — direct fillings, anterior and posterior. The patient who has the occasional filling now sees a member fee on it.
Premium — prevention, fillings and major dental. Carry over the lower tiers and add the bigger work: endodontics (4xx), crown and bridge (6xx) and implants (6xx). This is for patients planning, or partway through, larger treatment.
Dentist payments
If your associates are paid a commission on the fees they bill, the tier schedule has to leave something to pay them on. A discounted fee is fine; a $0.00 fee is not — set an item to zero and the commission on it is zero too. So when you build the member schedules, discount the fees, but never strip them to nothing. Because these schedules change what each dentist earns, agree them with your dentists before you go live. Walk through the discounted fees together so everyone is comfortable with the new numbers.
Before you start
Finalise your standard fee schedule first — every tier is built from it, so it pays to have your full fees right before you copy them. Decide the discount percentage you want for each item range, keeping preventive modest and putting the deeper discounts on major work, where the savings are big enough for patients to notice.
Step by step
Open your fee schedule area. This is where your health-fund and concession schedules already live. Look for Fee Schedules, Fees, Price Lists or Schedules — the wording varies between Dental4Windows, Praktika, EXACT (Software of Excellence), Core and Oasis, but the feature is the same.
Copy your standard schedule. Duplicate your full-fee schedule rather than starting from a blank one — that way every item is present and you only change what you mean to. Name the copy clearly, for example Membership — Essential.
Discount the right ranges. On the Essential copy, reduce the fees on the diagnostic (0xx) and preventive (1xx) items by your chosen percentage. Leave everything else at the standard fee.
Repeat for the next tiers. Copy the standard schedule again for Membership — Standard, apply the same preventive discounts and add the restorative range (5xx). Copy once more for Membership — Premium and add endodontics (4xx) and major work (6xx).
Save and activate all three schedules.
Assign the schedule when a patient joins. When someone signs up to a tier in SmilePass, set that patient's fee schedule in your software to the matching tier. From then on, every invoice pulls the member fee automatically.
Test it. Raise a sample item on a test patient and confirm the discounted fee appears. Do this once for each tier.
Keep them in sync. When you update your standard fees — at the annual review, say — update the three tier copies too, or rebuild them from the new standard.
Tips and common mistakes
Build from a copy, not a blank schedule. Starting blank is how items get missed and charged at zero.
Discount by range, not item by item. Pick a percentage for each ADA range and apply it across the band — faster to build and consistent to maintain.
One schedule per tier. A single blanket member list gives every member the same discount and the ladder collapses.
Make each step up real. Each tier should open a clearly bigger range of discounts, so the front desk can explain the upgrade in a sentence.
Go deeper on major work. A small discount on a clean is barely noticed, while a discount on an implant, crown or bridge is what makes joining worthwhile. Keep preventive discounts modest and put the real savings on the higher-value treatment.
Re-sync after a fee rise. The most common mistake is lifting standard fees and forgetting the tier copies — members quietly drift back to full price, or the gap widens and erodes your margin.
Reassign on upgrade. If a patient moves up a tier in SmilePass, change their fee schedule in your software to match.
Two systems, one automatic discount
SmilePass runs the membership and the billing; your practice software holds the fee schedules. Build a schedule per tier once, assign it when a patient joins, and the right fee applies on every visit — no manual discounts at the front desk.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a separate fee schedule for each tier?
Yes — one per tier. It is the same approach your software already uses for health funds, where each fund has its own schedule.
Will the discount apply automatically?
Yes. Once a patient is on the tier's schedule, the member fee pulls through on every matching item, with no manual adjustment at the desk.
What if a patient upgrades?
Reassign them to the higher tier's schedule. New invoices use the new fees; past invoices are unchanged.
Does my practice software support this?
Almost all Australian systems do — it is the same multi-schedule feature used for health-fund and concession pricing. The menu wording is the only thing that differs between them.
Written by Cristian Dunker, BDS, dentist (oral rehabilitation), with MBAs in Marketing (Sociesc-Brazil), Project Management (FGV-Brazil) and Finance (Bond - QLD).
