EBITDA Tracking is Live

EBITDA Tracking is Now Live in Medfin

From today, Medfin calculates your EBITDA automatically — connected to your Xero account and your practice management system, updated every day.

No spreadsheets. No waiting for year-end accounts. No asking your accountant to run the numbers. You open the platform and the figure is there.

Here's what you can see:

• EBITDA and EBITDA margin — live, updated daily
• Last 12 months EBITDA — a rolling annual view, always current
• EBITDA trend over time — so you can see the direction of travel, not just a snapshot
• Monthly breakdown — revenue, lab costs, staff costs, and operating costs side by side, with EBITDA and margin for each month, and clear visual indicators for positive and negative months

This is the full picture. Not a number you calculated six months ago. Not a figure you're waiting for year-end to confirm. Your actual EBITDA, every day, in one place.

Why We Built This

There is one question that follows every dental group owner around. Brokers ask it. Lenders ask it. Investors ask it. Anyone who has ever looked at buying a practice asks it.

What's your EBITDA?

And in most cases, the honest answer is: I'm not entirely sure. I'd need to pull it together. My accountant calculated it last year.

That's not a criticism — it's just the reality of how the number has always worked. EBITDA doesn't live anywhere obvious. It has to be constructed from your Profit and Loss report, with a series of adjustments, and the exercise usually only happens once a year when someone external asks for it. By the time you have it, it's already out of date.

We built this because that gap — between what's happening in your practice now and what you'll find out in December — is where decisions get made blind.

Why EBITDA Matters More Than Most Owners Realise

Revenue is easy to talk about. Most practice owners know their top line. But revenue tells you almost nothing about what's left over after paying for the dentistry, the staff, the premises, and everything else it costs to run the business.

Two practices can both turn over £1 million and have EBITDA of £80,000 and £280,000 respectively. Same revenue. Completely different businesses.

EBITDA is the number that determines what your practice is actually worth — and for three specific reasons, it's the one you should be tracking every month.

Valuation: The Multiple That Determines Your Practice's Value

Dental practices in the UK are typically valued as a multiple of EBITDA. For independent practices, that multiple currently sits somewhere in the 4–8x range. For well-run groups with strong systems and consistent performance, it can be significantly higher.

The implication of that is worth sitting with.

A practice with £300,000 EBITDA at a 6x multiple is worth £1.8 million. The same practice, if costs have crept up and EBITDA has fallen to £150,000, is worth £900,000 at the same multiple. That's £900,000 of value destroyed — without any change to the revenue line, without any change in how many patients come through the door.

The multiple compounds everything. A £50,000 improvement in EBITDA — achievable through better associate utilisation, tighter lab cost management, or overhead efficiency — is worth £300,000 in sale price at a 6x multiple. A £100,000 improvement is worth £600,000.

This is why M&A advisors, dental brokers, and acquirers focus on EBITDA almost exclusively. The value of the business is determined by what's left after running it, not by what comes in the top.

There's a second layer worth understanding. Buyers don't use your reported EBITDA — they use a normalised version. They add back owner salary above market rate, strip out one-off costs that won't recur, and adjust for anything personal to you as the current owner. The normalised EBITDA is usually higher than the raw figure, and that gap can be material. Practices that go to market without a clean, well-prepared EBITDA figure routinely leave money on the table.

Borrowing: What Lenders Are Actually Looking At

If you're looking to refinance, acquire another site, fund a refurbishment, or bring in external capital, EBITDA is the number lenders will stress-test before anything else.

Lenders calculate this as a ratio of EBITDA to debt service — the interest and repayment obligations on the loan. The higher your EBITDA relative to those obligations, the more comfortable the lender is.

A practice with £200,000 EBITDA and £60,000 in annual debt service has a coverage ratio of 3.3x — most lenders are comfortable. The same practice with £100,000 EBITDA is at 1.7x — lenders get cautious. Same loan. Different EBITDA. Completely different conversation.

Groups that can demonstrate strong, consistent, and improving EBITDA get better terms, more capacity, and faster decisions. Groups that can't often hit a ceiling on what they can borrow — and therefore on how fast they can grow.

Decision-Making: The Number That Tells You If Things Are Getting Better or Worse

Revenue can be misleading. A practice can be growing its top line while profitability is deteriorating — if costs are rising faster than revenue, if associate pay structures are eroding margins, or if overhead is creeping up unnoticed.

EBITDA strips all of that out and gives you a clean read on whether the operating business is improving or declining. Track it monthly and you'll see trends that your year-end accounts won't show you until it's too late to act.

A 2% improvement in EBITDA margin on a £1 million practice is £20,000. That's not a number you'll notice on a busy Tuesday. But tracked month by month, you'll see it happening — or not happening — in time to do something about it.

What Changes When You Have It Every Day

When a broker calls, you have the number. When a lender asks for your latest management accounts, the EBITDA figure is there and it's current. When you're deciding whether to hire, renegotiate a lease, or open a fourth surgery, you can test that decision against a number that's updated in real time — not one from last year's accounts.

It also changes the conversation you can have with your team. Associates, practice managers, and finance leads can all be working towards a shared, visible target — rather than waiting for year-end to find out whether the year went well.

If you run a dental group and you're thinking about selling in the next two to five years, this is the most important number to be tracking now — not in the year you decide to go to market.

Who Can Access It

Already a Medfin customer? This is live on your platform now. Open your dashboard and you'll find it there.

Not using Medfin yet? We'd love to show you what this looks like for your numbers. Book a call at medfin.ai/book-a-call and we'll walk you through it.