Clinical catalogue
Set up the procedure codes, fees, price lists, recall types, note templates and patient forms the clinical workspace charts and charges with.
By the end of this page you'll have a working clinical catalogue: the codes your clinicians chart and plan with, the fees each one carries, the price lists patients are charged under, the recall types that bring patients back, and the forms patients fill in.
The Clinical catalogue and Clinical templates sections of Settings are visible to everyone who sees the Clinical workspace, and the NHS or Insurance section to a practice in the country it serves. Only owners and managers can change it; clinicians read it.
Defaults installed for you
Every practice starts with a researched set of clinical defaults for its country, installed when the practice is created:
- practice codes for examinations, radiographs, hygiene, restorative, endodontic, prosthodontic, surgical, periodontal, orthodontic and cosmetic work, each with the chart icon and colour it draws with, plus the common findings a chart records and the tooth statuses and diagnoses of the chart's tooth menu (Unerupted, Partially erupted, Missing, Extracted, Implanted, Retained root; Drifted or rotated mesially or distally, Over erupted, Impacted, Mobility);
- the ten categories those codes sit in;
- three recall types (Examination and Hygiene every 6 months, Periodontal review every 3 months), triggered by the codes that complete them;
- a Standard fees schedule with a Private price list, and indicative fees on every researched code;
- appointment types, three treatment rooms per site, treatment templates, clinical note templates, letter templates, a Medical history form and ten consent forms.
A UK practice also gets the NHS band items; an English practice gets the NHS price list too. A US practice's codes carry CDT-equivalent names without the ADA's D-numbers, which arrive with the practice's CDT licence entitlement. An Italian practice gets everything in Italian with euro fees. Any other country gets the English set without fees.
Each clinical catalogue and template page carries a Defaults card (appointment types and operatories do not: once seeded, those lists are the practice's own). It lists what that page is missing against the set above; Restore defaults adds only that, and never changes or removes a row you created, edited or archived. When nothing is missing the button reads All defaults present.
The fees are indicative 2026 mid-range figures, not a recommendation. Fees & prices shows a banner and marks each default revision Default until you set your own. A code without a researched figure ships unpriced and the chart says so when it is charted; NHS band items are priced only from the statutory charges Smileline has on file, and stay unpriced until those are captured.
Procedure codes
A code is one thing the practice plans, charts or charges. Each code has:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Code | Short and unique, e.g. CROWN. Fixed once created — a different procedure is a new code. |
| Kind | Practice (an act you charge for), Retail (a product), NHS band item (UK practices only), or Finding (something observed, never priced). Fixed once created. |
| Category | Where the code appears on the chart and in reports. |
| Treatment area | What the code applies to: a surface, a tooth, a root, a quadrant, an arch, the whole mouth, or an area. |
| Patient-facing name | The name patients see on estimates and invoices, when it differs. |
| Default duration | Minutes suggested when the code is booked. |
| Schedules recall | The recall type set when the code is completed. |
| Tax treatment | Exempt, standard-rated, zero-rated, or none (findings). |
| Requires a clinical note | The chart asks for a note before the procedure is completed. |
| Bill to insurance | Whether the code goes on a claim (US). |
| Chart icon | How the code draws on the odontogram: a surface fill, a large or small circle, a square, a triangle, a post, a bar, an implant (circle plus bar), a cross, an absent tooth, a text mark, or none. |
| Icon colour | The icon's colour: pick with the swatch or type a hex like #f97316. Clear falls back to the shape's default. |
| Icon text | Up to 12 characters shown inside a circle or square, or as the text mark ("Zirc", "Wear"). |
CDT codes (US) arrive with the practice's ADA licence entitlement; until then the Kind picker offers the practice, retail and finding kinds, plus the NHS band kind at a UK practice. NHS band and the NHS price-list kind are offered — and accepted — only in the UK. Click Edit on a row to change everything but its code and kind.
Fees & prices
Settings → Fees & prices prices every active code in one fee schedule at a time.
Pick the Fee schedule — the default one is Standard fees. A schedule may belong to one location.
Choose the date New fees apply from. It defaults to today.
Type the fee against a code and click Set. The fee in force today shows beside it, with the date it started.
Fees are never edited in place. Setting a fee adds a new revision from its effective date, so a procedure charted last month keeps citing the revision it was priced with. Use Retire only for a revision entered by mistake; it disappears from the schedule and no new procedure can cite it.
The second table on the page holds a price list's overrides: pick the Price list, type a different fee against a code and click Set, or Clear it to fall back to the schedule. A price list is one arrangement — private, membership, or NHS at a UK practice — and prices from one fee schedule.
Fee schedules and price lists
Settings → Fee schedules names the tables; Settings → Price lists names the arrangements and points each one at its schedule. A membership price list also names its provider and band. Archiving either hides it from new work and keeps history intact.
Recall types
Settings → Recall types lists what patients are recalled for and how often (in months, with no upper limit). Codes that schedule a recall pick one of these.
Payment methods and adjustment types
Payment methods are how the practice takes money — card, cash, bank transfer, online, card terminal, other. Each ledger payment and refund names one. Adjustment types are the named reasons for a ledger adjustment: a credit type reduces what the patient owes (a discount, a correction in their favour), a debit type increases it, and a type marked Write-off posts a write-off entry instead of an adjustment (owners and managers only). The practice starts with a sensible set of both; archive the ones you do not use rather than deleting them, because posted entries refer to them.
Note templates
Settings → Note templates holds prewritten note bodies a clinician can start from. Give a template a name and an optional category, then click Template on its row to write the text.
Inserting a template never records an examination by itself. Prompts and normal-finding statements still need the clinician's review before the note is completed.
Patient forms
Settings → Patient forms holds the medical-history, consent and questionnaire templates. A form has a stable Key, a Kind, an optional expiry (days after which a patient is asked again), an attestation the patient confirms, and whether it requires a signature and a clinical review.
Each field is a question with a type — text, longer text, yes/no, a choice, several choices, a date, a number or a heading. A yes/no or choice question can raise an alert (medical, allergy, medication, infectious or warning, with a severity and a title) and propose a medical fact (a medication, allergy or condition) for the reviewing clinician.
Forms are versioned rather than edited: click New version, change what you need and Publish version. The previous version is archived and every submission keeps citing the version it answered.