A2P 10DLC
A2P 10DLC is the system US mobile carriers use to authorize business text messages sent from regular 10-digit phone numbers. Before a dental practice can send automated SMS to patients, it must register its brand (the business identity) and campaign (the specific use case, such as appointment reminders or review requests) with the major carriers through a registration process managed by the Campaign Registry.
Messages sent without proper A2P 10DLC registration are increasingly filtered, blocked, or delayed. Fines for non-compliance can reach $10 per message. Every legitimate patient communication platform handles this registration on behalf of its customers.
Appointment Confirmation
Appointment confirmations are typically sent 24-48 hours before the scheduled time and include a one-tap reply option (usually "C" to confirm or "R" to reschedule). Confirmed appointments update automatically in the practice management system, reducing no-shows and freeing front desk staff from making reminder calls.
Modern platforms integrate directly with the practice's PMS so confirmations pull live appointment data and push confirmation status back without any manual data entry.
Appointment Reminders
Distinct from confirmations (which ask the patient to verify attendance), reminders simply notify the patient that their appointment is coming up. Best practice is a two-touch system: a confirmation request 24-48 hours before, followed by a same-day reminder a few hours before the visit. This combination can reduce no-show rates by 40-50% compared to no reminders at all.
ApptTypes (TDO)
In TDO Software, the ApptTypes table holds the list of procedure categories that can be assigned to appointments — RCT Molar, Retreat, Apicoectomy, Evaluation, Consult, and so on. Over time, most practices accumulate duplicates and inconsistent naming in this table, which makes reporting unreliable. Annual cleanup is recommended.
A/R (Accounts Receivable)
In dental practices, A/R accumulates when insurance pays less than expected, when patients don't pay at checkout, or when balances are billed after the fact. The standard benchmark is to keep A/R over 90 days below 18% of total outstanding — anything higher signals a broken collections workflow.
A/R is typically broken into aging buckets: 0-30 days, 31-60 days, 61-90 days, and 90+ days. The older the balance, the less likely it is to collect, which is why proactive automated statements and text-to-pay workflows dramatically outperform paper-only collections.
Brand Registration
Brand registration is the first step in A2P 10DLC compliance. The practice (or its platform provider) submits information including legal business name, EIN, website, and contact details to The Campaign Registry. Once approved, the brand can register one or more campaigns under that identity.
Campaign Registration
After brand registration, each distinct messaging use case must be registered as a campaign. Common campaign types for dental practices include appointment reminders, review requests, and billing notifications. Each campaign has its own sample messages, opt-in flow, and approved content types.
Campaigns are assigned to a messaging service, which then handles actual message delivery. A practice can run multiple campaigns simultaneously (for example, appointment reminders in one campaign and billing statements in another) but cannot mix unrelated content within a single campaign without risking carrier blocks.
DSO (Days Sales Outstanding)
DSO is a key efficiency metric for revenue cycle management. A practice that collects most balances within 15 days has a DSO of around 15. A practice with significant 60+ day A/R will have a much higher DSO. Reducing DSO directly improves cash flow without increasing revenue.
ERM (Endodontic Referral Marketing)
ERM encompasses the systems used by specialty practices to monitor which GPs refer cases, how many cases per month, case types, production value, and trend direction. The goal is to retain existing referrers and grow relationships with under-performing ones — defense-first marketing rather than cold outreach.
Good ERM systems integrate directly with the practice's PMS to pull referring doctor data in real time, eliminating the manual spreadsheet work that most practices rely on.
Related: The Complete Guide to Referral Marketing for Endodontists
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Formerly called Google My Business, the Google Business Profile is the single most important marketing asset for any local service business, including dental practices. It displays the business name, hours, phone number, website, photos, and — critically — the star rating and reviews.
When a patient searches for an endodontist after being referred by their GP, the GBP is usually the first thing they see. A well-maintained profile with a high star rating, recent reviews, and responsive replies converts referrals into booked appointments.
HIPAA Texting
HIPAA-compliant texting is often misunderstood. HIPAA does not prohibit SMS to patients — it requires that practices obtain patient consent to communicate via text, avoid including protected health information (PHI) in message content when unnecessary, and use appropriate safeguards.
In practice, sending "Your appointment is tomorrow at 10am, reply C to confirm" is HIPAA-safe. Sending "Your root canal biopsy results are positive for infection" in an SMS would not be.
Messaging Service
A messaging service is a container that holds one or more phone numbers and is linked to one active A2P 10DLC campaign. All messages sent through that service share the same campaign registration, compliance rules, and sender pool.
Each phone number can only belong to one messaging service at a time, and each messaging service can only have one active campaign. This creates architectural constraints for practices running multiple use cases — a single combined campaign covering all use cases is often simpler than trying to separate them.
MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
MMS extends SMS to support media attachments. In dental contexts, MMS is used for patients sending pre-op or post-op photos to their practice, for insurance card images, and for practices sending visual instructions (such as tooth-brushing diagrams or product recommendations).
MMS requires a messaging service provider that supports media, and carriers may charge slightly more per MMS than per SMS. Most modern patient communication platforms support both formats transparently.
Operatory
In TDO Software, operatories are stored in the OpNames table and linked to appointments via the AppOps junction table. Assigning appointments to specific operatories lets staff visualize room utilization, prevent double-booking, and plan the day more efficiently. The operatory view is one of TDO's most useful scheduling features but is often underutilized by front desk staff.
Opt-In / Opt-Out
Opt-in is the explicit patient consent required before a practice can send automated text messages. Acceptable opt-in methods include signing a paper form at the front desk, checking a box on an online booking form, or replying "YES" to an initial SMS. The practice must keep records of consent.
Opt-out is the equally important ability for patients to stop receiving messages. Every automated SMS must include instructions on how to stop (typically "Reply STOP to opt out"), and the system must honor opt-out requests immediately and permanently. Failure to honor opt-outs violates TCPA and can result in significant fines.
PayLink
PayLink (often styled as SendVyte's Patient PayLink) is a pattern where the practice sends a patient a text message containing a secure, one-time payment URL. The patient taps the link, lands on a branded payment page showing the amount owed, and pays via Apple Pay, Google Pay, or a saved card — all within 30 seconds.
Compared to paper statements (which typically convert at single-digit rates on the first reminder), PayLink workflows convert at 30-40% on the first text. The reason is simple: removing friction dramatically increases completion rates.
Related: How Endodontists Can Reduce A/R
Referring Doctor
In specialty dental practices like endodontics, referring doctors are the primary source of new patients. Each referral is linked to the patient record in the PMS, which (in theory) allows the practice to track referral volume by doctor over time. In practice, this data is often difficult to extract and analyze without specialized tools.
Tracking referring doctor performance — by case count, trend direction, case type, and production value — is the foundation of effective referral marketing. Practices that don't measure cannot manage.
SMS (Short Message Service)
SMS is the basic text messaging system supported by all mobile phones. A single SMS message is limited to 160 characters; longer messages are split into segments. SMS does not support images, video, or other media — that requires MMS.
In the dental context, SMS is the default channel for appointment reminders, confirmations, review requests, and payment links because it has near-universal patient reach (over 99% of cell phones support SMS) and a very high open rate (over 98% of SMS messages are opened, most within 90 seconds of delivery).
Stripe Connect
Stripe Connect is the infrastructure that enables platforms like SendVyte to offer payment processing to dental practices without acting as a merchant themselves. Each practice creates its own Stripe Connected Account during onboarding, which means the practice is the merchant of record, the funds land directly in the practice's bank account, and the practice has full visibility and control over its own payments.
Compared to proprietary payment processors bundled with PMS software (which often charge 3%+ and lock practices in), Stripe offers transparent per-transaction pricing (typically 2.9% + 30¢) and no contract lock-in.
TDO Software
TDO was built by an endodontist specifically for endodontic workflows and remains the most-used specialty PMS in the category. It handles treatment planning, tooth-level charting, microscope integration, imaging, and clinical documentation in ways that no general-purpose dental PMS can match.
TDO stores its data in a SQL Server database on the practice's local network. Modern integrations — including SendVyte — read this data through a lightweight Windows agent that runs on the practice server, syncing appointment, patient, and production data to the cloud in real time without modifying the TDO database.
Related: SendVyte's TDO Integration
Text-to-Pay
Text-to-pay is the general category that includes PayLink and similar systems. The common pattern: the practice sends a balance notification via SMS, the patient taps a link or replies with payment intent, and the transaction completes without requiring a phone call, paper statement, or office visit.
The power of text-to-pay is speed. Where paper statements may take weeks to produce a payment (if at all), text-to-pay resolves balances within minutes of sending the message.
Two-Way Texting
Traditional SMS marketing is one-way: the business sends, the customer reads. Two-way texting creates a conversational channel where patients can ask questions, reschedule appointments, or request information simply by replying to a text. The replies land in a shared inbox that staff monitor throughout the day.
Two-way texting has become a significant part of dental front desk workflow, gradually replacing phone calls for routine patient communication. A single staff member can handle 5-10 text conversations simultaneously where they could only handle one phone call at a time.
Valpay
Valpay is the credit card processor integrated with TDO's in-house messaging and payment product (TDO Comms+). Practices using Comms+ are required to use Valpay for any payments processed through the system, at a rate of approximately 3.2% per transaction.
For a busy endodontic practice processing $60,000 per month in patient payments, Valpay's rate works out to roughly $1,920 per month in processing fees alone — a significant hidden cost that is often not obvious when practices evaluate Comms+ as a free add-on to TDO. Third-party platforms like SendVyte use Stripe instead, avoiding the Valpay lock-in entirely.
Webhook
Webhooks are the plumbing that makes modern software integrations work. When a patient replies to an SMS, Twilio sends a webhook to SendVyte's API announcing the incoming message. When a Stripe payment succeeds, Stripe sends a webhook so the practice's balance is updated immediately. When a Google review is posted, a webhook could trigger an AI reply draft.
Practices don't need to understand webhooks directly, but they're worth knowing about because they explain why modern platforms feel "instant" — there's no polling or manual refresh, just a continuous stream of events flowing between systems.
Built for the endodontic community
SendVyte brings modern patient communication, payments, and referral marketing to endodontic practices running TDO Software.
See How It Works