A dental insurance aging report lists every claim you have sent that a payer has not paid, sorted into columns by how many days it has been outstanding, usually 0 to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and over 90. It answers one question: how much of your money is sitting with insurance companies, and how old is that money. Every practice management system prints one.
What they do not agree on is the day the clock starts. And the number at the bottom is not what you will collect. Both of those cost practices money every month.
What is an insurance aging report?
An aging report groups unpaid claims according to age, meaning the days each one has gone unpaid. Nothing more complicated. The judgment sits in what it counts and what it silently leaves out.
| On the report | Not on the report |
|---|---|
| Claims created, sent, and still open | Patient balances, which age on a separate report |
| Claims pending attachments or clinical review | Claims marked received, even when the amount received was zero |
| Claims sent to a wrong payer id, still waiting | Completed treatment that was never attached to a claim |
| Secondary claims that were created and sent | Pre-treatment estimates, which request an opinion, not payment |
The right column is where the money hides. Scaling and root planing completed but never billed appears on no aging report, because no claim exists to age. Most systems ship a companion report listing completed procedures with no claim attached. Run it the same day, every time.
What day does your clock start on?
Three dates are candidates and systems differ: the date of service, the date the claim was created, or the date it was sent.
Take a crown seated on March 3. The claim is created March 5, waits for a periodontal chart, and goes out March 12. On June 5 it is 94 days old by date of service, 92 by creation date, 85 by sent date. One report puts it at the top of the work list. Another leaves it in the 61 to 90 column another week.
This matters beyond bookkeeping. Timely filing deadlines in most participating provider agreements run from the date of service, so a report aging from the sent date flatters the claims closest to expiring. Test yours with one claim that has a known gap between service and submission, then write the answer at the top of the page for whoever works it.
A dental insurance aging report example, line by line
A short illustrative extract, with the status note any usable version of this report should carry.
| Claim | Carrier | Sent | Days | Amount | Last note | The move |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10418 | Carrier A | Mar 12 | 18 | 1,240 | none | Nothing. Normal float |
| 10357 | Carrier A | Feb 6 | 52 | 310 | none | Status check, no acknowledgment on file |
| 10290 | Carrier B | Jan 9 | 80 | 1,875 | Called 2/28, in process | Get a check number or a denial date |
| 10144 | Carrier C | Nov 18 | 132 | 640 | Needs perio chart | Confirm the filing deadline, then attach |
| 10102 | Carrier B | Nov 4 | 146 | 95 | none | Work it or write it off, and record which |
Five lines, four actions, one decision. The 1,875 dollar claim is worth more than the other four combined and it sits in the middle of the page, which is the argument against working this report top to bottom. Alphabetical order by patient is not a priority order.
The 95 dollar line is the one practices handle worst. Writing it off may be the right call, but only if someone makes that call on purpose and records it.
The extract totals 4,160 dollars, of which 735 sits over 90 days. That is just under 18 percent, and it is the most useful figure on the page.
Where to find it in Open Dental
In Open Dental the report sits in the standard reports list, in the insurance group. The grouping and the label move between versions, so search the list rather than memorizing a path. Two reports overlap: one ages outstanding claims into columns, one lists sent claims with no payment received.
Claim status is the setting that matters most. A claim waiting to send is not outstanding with anybody, it is sitting with you, and belongs on a different list with a different owner. Confirm which statuses the report includes before treating its total as money a payer owes. Export to a file while you are there, because the value here is in sorting by dollar amount and by carrier.
How do I run the dental insurance Aging Report in Dentrix?
In the Office Manager, click Reports, point to Ledger, then click Insurance Aging Report. Select Dental to include dental carriers, set the report date, set minimum days past due to 30 for a working list, include both primary and secondary claims, and turn on claim status notes. Click OK, then print or preview from the Batch Processor.
One Dentrix trap: the Aging Report under Management ages guarantor balances, the Insurance Aging Report under Ledger ages claims. Different questions, so the totals are not supposed to match. Eaglesoft, Curve Dental and Denticon each ship an equivalent. The label changes, the columns do not.
What each column should trigger
| Column | What it usually means | The move |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 30 days | Normal float for a clean electronic claim | Nothing, except claims with no clearinghouse acknowledgment, which never arrived |
| 31 to 60 days | The first honest follow up point | Status check. Get a received date, a claim number and a status, and write all three down |
| 61 to 90 days | A problem exists and nobody has found it | Look for a denial whose remittance never reached you, a pend for radiographs, a wrong payer id, or a check issued to the patient |
| Over 90 days | Where claims quietly expire | Check the filing deadline first, then work strictly by dollar amount |
Filing deadlines vary by payer, plan and state, commonly running from 90 days to a year or more from the date of service, and your contract is the only reliable source. Past the deadline a claim stops being receivable, and a participating provider agreement usually bars billing the patient for it.
Most states also have a prompt payment law requiring clean claims to be paid inside a set window, commonly 30 to 45 days. As of this writing these vary by state and generally do not reach self funded employer plans, a large share of commercial dental. Confirm the rule with your state department of insurance before citing it to a payer.
The 61 to 90 column deserves the most suspicion, because it holds claims already decided and never posted. A root canal denied for thin documentation looks exactly like one still under review here, so a claim stalled at 70 days is worth a status inquiry rather than a wait. Our guide to why dental insurance denies root canals covers what that denial usually is.
Split medical claims out before working the list. Claims for dental procedures billed to medical insurance age through different reviewers, and trauma claims usually need a coordination of benefits answer first.
Four numbers to pull, and one to stop quoting
- Total insurance accounts receivable. A commonly quoted reference is roughly one month of production. Treat it as a starting point, not a rule, since it moves with your payer mix.
- Percent of the dollars over 90 days. Just under 18 percent in the extract above. Many practices manage toward a target under 10, and three months of direction beats any single month.
- Claim count over 90, next to the dollars. Eight claims at 2,000 dollars each is a payer problem. Two hundred at 80 dollars each is a submission problem.
- Claims with no status note in 21 days. The only figure here that measures your team rather than the payers, and the one nobody tracks. Our rundown of the KPIs worth measuring in dental revenue cycle work has the rest.
Stop quoting the total as money you are owed. Part is denied, part is past filing, part is duplicate submissions. And when one carrier owns the aged column month after month, the question moves from follow up to the contract itself, which maximizing dental insurance reimbursement rates covers.
Five ways this report gets made to look good
- Marking claims received at zero. The claim leaves the report, the denial behind it leaves every follow up list you have, and the balance lands on the patient or in a write off with nobody deciding that.
- Deleting and recreating a claim. Where the report ages from the creation or sent date, this resets a 200 day old claim to zero and hides it in the first column.
- Transferring the estimated insurance portion to the patient. The dollars move to a report nobody compares against this one.
- Raising the minimum days past due. A shorter page is not a smaller problem.
- Running it monthly. Filing windows close daily. A weekly pass at the 30 day and older list is smaller work than a monthly pass at everything.
Make it a worklist, not a printout
The gap between a practice with clean insurance aging and one with four pages over 90 days is almost never the report. Everybody can print it. The difference is whether each line has an owner, a note saying what was tried, and a next action date, and whether the claims that keep landing there get fixed at submission instead of chased afterward. Most chasing is mechanical status checking, the first thing workflow automation actually reaches in a dental office.
Curo ages outstanding claims from your own claim and remittance data, with nothing printed, and routes each stalled claim to the reason it stalled: a missing attachment, a closing filing deadline, a payment that posted short. That sits under claims automation.
Either way, run the report Friday. Sort by dollar amount rather than patient name, find the oldest claim above 1,000 dollars, and check its filing deadline before touching anything else. Then count the lines carrying no note at all. That count, not the total, is the real report.