Miscellaneous Setup 

From the Main Menu, select Setup | Miscellaneous:

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

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.

Appointment 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.

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.

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.
"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.

Other:
"Main Window Title" lets you change the text that shows at the very top of the main window. This is especially useful if you use multiple databases. Then, you could easily see which database was the current one by looking at the main title.
"Show ID in title bar" lets you show the patient number or the chart number in the title bar
"Process Signal Interval" refreshes commonly used information, especially the appointment screen. Details available in Refreshing.
"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.
"Use international tooth numbers" 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.
"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.
"Ins Plans default to apply deductible before percent" Sets the default for the Deductible checkbox on the Ins Plan.
"Use Random Primary Keys" option turns on support for Multiple Servers. It is very important to understand how this affects your database before you decide to enable it.
"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.

Task Lists
"Always show task list" The Task Lists will show at the bottom or right of the screen in all modules rather than requiring user to click a button from the Manage module.

Communications files:
In the Main Toolbar, there is a Letter button for a simple letter.  You can set up your own jpg background and specify it here. On the Main Toolbar Letter button, there is also a dropdown menu item for Stationery.  This lets you specify a Word document for a simple letter.