Module Setup 

From the Main Menu, select Setup | Modules:

Many of the options are self explanatory. Some of them are more complex and are explained here.

Appointments module
The way Open Dental currently tracks broken appointments is by letting the user make Adjustment entries at the same time as they break an appointment. At some point, we will move to a dedicated table in the database for tracking broken appointments. There is an option above to use Commlog entries to track broken appointments. The reason this is not recommended is because the Commlog entries will not get automatically converted in the future when we move to the new table. On the other hand, using the Commlog might make sense if you don't want the patients to see that you are tracking their broken appointments and if you also wish to see the broken appointments in the Chart module. The option for "Show ! at upper right of appts for ins not sent" lets you see a red exclamation mark when any member of a family has procedures that have not been sent to insurance yet. For a few very large offices, enabling this option might slow down the Appointments module.
There are three time trigger fields.  See the Time Tracking section of the Appointment Edit window for an explanation of how to use confirmed statuses to trigger time entries.

Family module
"Enable medical e-claims".  If you wish to use Medical e-claims, then this feature must first be turned on here, or all medical e-claims will be blocked. 
"Many patients have identical insurance plans". This causes the checkbox at the bottom of the Ins Plan Edit window to always be checked by default. This would cause any change made to an insurance plan to be applied to all other identical insurance plans. For most offices you would NOT want to do this.
"Insurance defaults to PPO percentage instead of category percentage plan type".  This causes new Ins Plans to be created with a default of PPO percentage for offices that see mostly PPO.
"Automatically generate allowed fee schedules for category percentage plans". Allowed Fee Schedules will be automatically generated.  The fee schedule name will the the same as the Carrier name.  If a fee schedule with that name already exists, it will be used.  Otherwise a new fee schedule will be created.

Treatment Plan module: Users can override some of these options on the Treatment Plan page. To override the note for a patient, you will need to save the TP first, and then override the note on the saved TP.

Account module:
"Show credit card info on statements" refers to the blank lines at the upper right which lets users fill out their credit card info to make a payment.
"Show notes for payments and adjustments on statements".  These notes always show on the screen.
"Show procedure breakdown on statements" will show extra financial info for each procedure.  This information will show regardless of whether the "Show Proc Breakdowns" box is checked in the Account module show tab.
"Balances don't subtract insurance estimate". Be careful. This will change the accounting method for all users. It will cause balances to be computed based on the actual work done without taking into account any estimated payments from insurance. This is generally only used if your patients are responsible for all treatment as it is done, and you don't accept assignment of insurance benefits. All payments then go directly to the patients without involving the dental office.
"Use bold balance view" changes the appearance of the upper portion of the Account module to make the balance more obvious.
"Allow storing credit card numbers" adds two boxes at the upper right of the Account module. One is for the CC#, and the other is for the expiration date. This data is stored in plain text in the database, which probably violates credit card security guidelines unless you have a small secure closed network with physical security. But keep in mind that it is no worse than the current practice that many offices have of storing CC#'s in various note boxes. The best practice is to store the CC#'s in your CC program which encrypts them.
"Show provider income transfer window after entering insurance payment" see Provider Income Transfer.
"On e-claims, send treating provider info for each separate procedure" Only applies to E-claims. Paper Claims have no place to include information for more than one treating provider.

Chart module: Usually, treatment is entered with TP status.  But sometime, you need to enter existing treatment.  After doing so, it's easy to forget to set the status back to TP, so we do it for you automatically when you switch patients.  This automatic behavior can be annoying for some offices that prefer to enter completed procedures directly from the Chart module without also entering appointments. For those offices, the checkbox,
"Automatically reset entry status to TreatPlan after selecting a different patient" can be unchecked.
"Tooth Nomenclature " see Foreign Countries. The numbers used will be 11-48 for permanent teeth and 51-85 for primary teeth. This does not change how any data is stored in the database, but only how it is displayed on the screen and in reports. So, you can freely switch back and forth between International tooth numbers and the American 1-32 / A-T system. For information on supernumerary teeth, see the Procedure Edit page.