Help

Create a free account, then put your practice in Settings: its name, UDA value, pay day and your rates. After that, log work on the Add tab as you go, and your totals build up in Earnings. If you would rather look around first, try it with sample data.

Yes. Occlude is made for phones and works in any modern browser. To keep it on your home screen, open occlude.co.uk in Safari (iPhone) or Chrome (Android), tap Share or the menu, then choose Add to Home Screen.

Yes. In Settings, open Import from Excel or CSV, upload your file and match the columns. Rows without a valid date or treatment are skipped.

A date, the treatment, and for private work the amount charged and any lab fee. Patient initials or an ID are optional. Please never enter full patient names.

Yes. On the Add tab, tap Whole day at the top. Type the day's total NHS UDAs, total private income and total lab fees, then tap Add entry. It counts in your earnings, pay periods and exports like any other entry, and shows in the Log as "Day total", where you can edit it. The choice is remembered on that phone, and you can switch back to Per patient at any time. You can also speak it, for example "24 UDAs, private 600, lab fees 120". If you share your activity with a practice, they see the day's totals rather than individual patients.

Yes. On the Referrals tab, tap Sent to me. Add each referral you receive (initials or an ID only, who sent it, the reason, and whether it is urgent), then move it through Received, Booked, Seen and Report sent. Ones not yet booked are shown in red with how long they have been waiting, and finished ones drop to the bottom.

Yes. In Settings, open your practice and tap a side of the switch under What work do you do here? to NHS only, Mixed or Private only. NHS only hides private income and commission. Private only hides UDAs, NHS treatments and the NHS and Pending filters. The Add screen follows the practice you pick, and anything you have already logged is kept and still counted.

Go to Settings, open your practice, then Changes over time. Pick the date the change starts and fill in what is new: the UDA rate, your lab fee share, the UDAs for a treatment, or your private commission bands. Entries before that date keep the old figures, so your past earnings do not move. Do not edit the practice figures above for this, because those apply to everything from the start.

Yes, on a phone with Chrome or Safari. On the Add tab tap the microphone button (Speak), under Add entry, wait for the short beep, and say it, for example "Molar RCT for A B at Elm Street, lab fee 20", or "private £60 for C D". It fills in the form for you to check, and nothing is saved until you tap Add entry. If it could not tell which practice or treatment you meant, it asks and offers buttons. Say "next" between patients to do several in one go: if more than one is ready you get a list with tick boxes and one Add all button, and any that need more details are asked about afterwards. Occlude also reads back what it heard and asks out loud for anything missing, then listens for your answer; the speaker icon under the buttons switches the voice off. Say initials only, never patient names. Your phone's speech service turns your voice into text (see the privacy policy), and the microphone needs to be allowed for occlude.co.uk.

NHS work is paid in monthly cycles with a cut-off date. Occlude groups your NHS work by those cut-off dates, so the totals line up with payday. You can edit the cut-off dates in Settings if your practice uses different ones.

NHS work that has not yet been submitted is shown separately, because it is not paid until it is submitted. When it has gone in, use the button on the pending banner in the Log tab to mark it as submitted.

Occlude shows what it expects from the entries you have logged. The usual reasons for a difference are: work not yet submitted; entries not yet logged; a UDA value that has changed; pension contributions taken off before you are paid; and lab fees being deducted in a different month from the one the work was done in. Occlude counts a lab fee against the period the work belongs to, but a practice may take it off on a later payslip, so one month looks too high and the next too low. Over two or three months the difference usually evens out. You can enter your actual pay in Earnings and Occlude will show the gap, and the practice or your payslip will tell you which deductions were taken.

Your income divided by the hours you work, for NHS, private or both. Set your average hours for each practice in Settings, then see the result in the Hourly view of Earnings.

In the Accounts tab, open Expenses. You can choose a batch of invoices and tick which are for work, upload a bank statement CSV and tick the business payments, or add one by hand. Things that repeat, such as indemnity or your GDC fee, go in as recurring costs once.

If you tick the box, yes. A copy is kept privately against the expense so you can find it later. You can attach or remove one from any expense.

The Expenses tab has a mileage log with HMRC's simple rates, and a list for equipment such as loupes. Travel between two practices is allowed. Ordinary travel to the practice you normally work at is commuting and is not. Ask your accountant how to claim equipment.

No. It prepares the figures in the headings HMRC uses and an estimate of what to put aside, including student loan repayments, and you can give a pack or a read-only link to your accountant. You, or your accountant, send the figures to HMRC using Making Tax Digital software.

As many as you work at. There is no limit on practices.

It is £5.99 a month, or £59 a year, and the first month is free. You add a card to start, but you are not charged for the first 30 days, and if you cancel before then you pay nothing. If you stop subscribing, your account becomes read-only: you can still view and export everything you logged, and nothing is deleted. You can see your plan and cancel at any time in Billing. See pricing. While we are in pilot, Occlude is free to use and no card is taken.

You can track expenses now. The quarterly tax view is coming soon.

Yes, if you want it. In Settings, under Notifications, you can switch on a Monday summary, a monthly summary, a Friday nudge if you have logged nothing that week, a pay day reminder and a heads-up before each NHS cut-off date. You can also pause everything while you are away. All of it is off until you turn it on, and you pick the day and timing of each one. Practice managers and principals have their own Notifications in the practice view: weekly and monthly practice summaries, a heads-up when a dentist has gone quiet, and an NHS cut-off reminder.

Open the profile menu in the app and choose Send feedback, or use the Send feedback button at the bottom of Settings (in the practice view too). Or email us, below.

Yes. In Settings, choose Export all my data and you get a copy.

In Settings, choose Delete account. This removes your account and your data.

On the log in page, choose Forgot password? and we will email you a link. If it does not arrive within a few minutes, check your junk folder.

Check your junk folder first, and mark the email as not junk. If it is not there after ten minutes, write to us at the address below and we will help.

Read our privacy policy. In short: we ask for patient initials only, and you can export or delete your data at any time.