Case Study: Real Good Dental Group | Building a Scalable, Modern Finance Infrastructure

Written By Zak Smith

Real Good Dental Group is one of the UK’s fastest-growing dental organisations, expanding through acquisition and rapid clinic onboarding. However, their finance operations had not kept pace with growth. Legacy systems, inconsistent processes, and manual workflows were slowing expansion and limiting visibility across the group.

WorkFin partnered with RDG to deliver a full finance transformation. This included migrating all sites from Sage Line 50 to a unified Xero platform, automating supplier invoice approvals, standardising financial processes, and introducing real-time Power BI dashboards.

The result was a modern, scalable finance environment that provided RDG’s leadership with full visibility, tight control, and the infrastructure required to run a large multi-site group confidently.

RDG summarised the experience simply:
'WorkFin built us a scalable finance infrastructure and gave management full visibility of the business. Their professionalism, responsiveness and attention to detail have been excellent.'

The Challenge

As RDG grew rapidly through acquisitions, its finance function became a bottleneck rather than an enabler. Before the transformation, RDG faced several operational challenges:

1. A fragmented finance environment
Each acquired clinic used its own version of Sage Line 50, creating multiple ledgers, duplicated processes, lack of standardisation, and manual reconciliations across dozens of sites. Leadership had no consolidated view of performance.

2. High reliance on manual processes
Supplier invoices were emailed, printed, or approved informally. This caused delays in month-end, errors and inconsistencies, poor audit trails, and significant stress on the finance team.

3. Slow, retrospective reporting
Without real-time dashboards or automated reporting, management relied on outdated spreadsheets and manual summaries. This limited their ability to forecast cash, identify underperforming clinics, manage supplier costs, and support strategic decision-making.

4. A finance function not built for scale
Every new site added complexity and workload. RDG needed a system that could handle growth rather than break under it.

Why did RDG choose WorkFin?

RDG selected WorkFin because they needed a partner who understood multi-site healthcare operations, fast-growth acquisition-led organisations, and the practical realities of unifying dozens of finance systems. They also required expertise in automation, efficiency, real-time reporting, and designing a finance infrastructure that scales long-term.

WorkFin brought a hands-on, embedded approach. We provided not just software but people, process, structure, and continuous improvement.

The WorkFin Solution

1. Migration From Sage Line 50 to a Single Xero Platform
WorkFin led a complete migration programme covering all RDG clinics. This included extracting, cleaning, and aligning historic data, standardising the chart of accounts and coding structure, creating group-wide reporting templates, and training RDG’s internal team and local admins.

The impact was immediate: one system, one source of truth, one consistent set of processes.

2. Supplier Invoice Automation with P2D
RDG previously managed invoices manually across dozens of clinics. WorkFin implemented P2D to automate this end-to-end. Benefits included auto-capture of invoices, unified approval workflows, real-time status tracking, strong audit controls, and a drastic reduction in administrative time.

Invoice approval that once took days now happens in hours.

3. Real-Time Power BI Dashboards
WorkFin built a suite of interactive dashboards for RDG’s leadership team, covering site-level profitability, group revenue trends, cashflow forecasting, debtor and creditor analysis, cost-per-clinic insights, and performance KPIs tied to strategic priorities.

For the first time, RDG’s leadership could see what was happening, where it was happening, and what needed action instantly.

4. A Scalable Finance Infrastructure
WorkFin engineered the underlying structure to support RDG’s continued expansion. This included standard operating procedures for every finance process, automated approval chains, robust user permissions, a future-proof onboarding framework for new clinics, and consistent coding and reconciliation practices.

The result is a finance function capable of supporting a group twice RDG’s current size.

The Impact

Operational Efficiency

  • Month-end was reduced significantly

  • Manual workload was cut through automation

  • Clean, consistent data across all clinics

  • Far fewer errors, duplications, and bottlenecks

Visibility and Control
Leadership gained a real-time view of each clinic’s performance, transparent cost management, better supplier oversight, and clear insight into group-wide trends.

Strategic Advantage
RDG now has a finance function aligned with its acquisition strategy, infrastructure that supports continued scaling, stronger confidence among investors, banks, and partners, and a leadership team empowered by clear, accessible insights.

Their testimonial captures it perfectly: 'WorkFin built us a scalable finance infrastructure and gave management full visibility of the business.'

The Results

RDG’s transformation is a clear example of how finance operations can shift from being a friction point to a strategic asset.

Through technology, structure, and hands-on partnership, WorkFin delivered a finance function that is efficient, automated, reliable, and built to support RDG’s ambitious growth journey.

WorkFin did not just modernise the numbers. We unlocked visibility, alignment, and confidence across an entire group:

  • Predictable and fast month-end close

  • Confidence in numbers, confidence in scaling.

  • Reduced admin burden across clinics.

  • Rapid visibility into profitability across your business.

Zak Smith