Running an NHS contract in England or Wales means living in Compass. Claims go in, statuses come back, and the money follows a schedule the practice does not set.
The friction shows up in the gaps. A submission fails without telling you. A PIN sits in a different folder from the one you searched. A file never arrives, and the body that received it cannot advise on why. This guide works through Compass as a practice uses it, and marks at each point what software such as Dentally takes off your desk and what stays with you.
Compass is the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) system that holds all the contractual, activity and superannuation information attached to an NHS dental contract. A practice uses NHS Compass to submit claims, check where each one has got to and get paid.
NHSBSA runs it through NHS Dental Services, covering England, Wales and the Isle of Man. Commissioners, providers and clinicians hold accounts at different access levels, and a provider can delegate access to practice staff.
NHSBSA has said Compass is expected to be replaced in February 2027 by the NHS Dental Services Portal (NHSDSP), subject to the remaining system build and test milestones, with identities verified through GOV.UK One Login rather than an NHS smartcard (NHSBSA's own update on the planned NHSDSP replacement for Compass). Practices were asked to check their Compass email address was current and unique to them by 28 August 2026, since the registration invitation goes there.
If a submission has already failed, skip ahead to what to do when a submission fails.
Username, password and three characters from your memorable word. No NHS smartcard appears anywhere in the Compass login flow, which catches out staff arriving from other NHS systems. Five or more wrong attempts lock the account for 30 minutes.
Lost the password or the memorable word? The forgotten password or memorable word link on the login page starts the reset: follow the on-screen instructions, then answer your security question. A separate link at the bottom covers a blocked account or a forgotten username, and routes you by user type. Usernames are fixed at creation.
Who unlocks you depends on the kind of account you hold, and this is where the time goes. Participant users are unlocked by the administrator who created their account, practice staff by the provider who granted them access, and a Commissioner by whoever set their account up. Only a provider, clinician or Commissioner administrator needs NHSBSA itself, on 0300 330 1348, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Getting an account splits by nation before you reach a login screen. Primary Care Support England (PCSE) creates Compass accounts for dentists in England; in Wales the Local Health Board does. Participant accounts, which most practice-manager logins are, come from the Administrator at the practice.
Two numbers, two folders. The performer number, called the Personal ID, sits in the Clinician folder. The EDI PIN sits in the Activity folder. Different numbers, different jobs.
The performer number and the PIN are two different numbers held in two different places, and nothing on screen says so. The performer number is called the Personal ID and lives in the Clinician folder. The EDI PIN lives in the Activity folder. Practices lose afternoons assuming one search finds both.
Select Clinician, then Clinician Search, then Search. Your details populate the screen and the number shows in the Personal ID column (NHSBSA's own guidance on finding a Compass Personal ID). It is a random six-digit number, generated once a dentist has registered with the General Dental Council and been created as an NHS clinician, and it stays the same across their whole NHS career, breaks in service included.
Screens labelled Clinician instead of performer are deliberate. NHSBSA's notice reads: "Due to changes within Dentistry the term Performer will now be replaced by the word Clinician." The rename will never reach the statutory list, which the Regulations still call the dental performers list. Clinician for Compass screens, performer for the list.
The PIN sits somewhere else entirely: Activity, then Clinician PIN request, with Reset PIN if a new one is needed (NHSBSA's guidance on requesting or resetting an EDI PIN). It does not expire, and it is the same PIN on every contract that clinician is attached to (how long a Compass EDI PIN stays valid). A provider can request a temporary PIN, valid three months, to clear outstanding claims for a clinician who has left. Resetting a PIN invalidates the old one at once, breaking every stored copy in the practice software. When a pin in edited for a practitioner, this is effective across the whole practice meaning you would still need to go back and resubmit any failed claims due to an incorrect pin.
Dentally publishes its own fix for the Invalid PIN claim error a reset produces.
A third number gets tangled in. The GDC registration number comes first, from a different body, and Compass uploads the GDC register monthly, which is why a name change takes weeks to show. On an FP17W, the Welsh NHS dental claim form, a dental care professional's GDC number is a separate field from the responsible clinician's Personal ID.
In Wales, none of this touches PCSE. The dental performers list is a Local Health Board list under The National Health Service (Performers Lists) (Wales) Regulations 2026, and NWSSP Primary Care Services administers the applications on the Boards' behalf (NWSSP's guidance for dentists applying to the Wales dental performers list).
Being on the English list is not enough: a dentist already on a list in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland still applies, on the short DPL5 form, and everyone else uses DPL1. NWSSP asks for at least 12 weeks before the intended start date, and says plainly that this is an advisory timescale and not a guarantee. One list per dentist, and once on it you can work anywhere in Wales.
Five words tell you where a claim stands, and they sit in one place: Activity, then Activity Search (Detail), then the claim, then Processing Details. Failed Validation means the claim rejected on insufficient or conflicting information. Validated means it passed and is waiting for the next schedule. Processed means it is on one.
Deleted covers a scheduled claim since removed, possibly replaced. Cleared arrives three ways: you amended a failed claim, so the original clears; NHS Dental Services amended it after a scanning issue; or nobody amended it, it passed six months old, and the system cleared it for you.
Around all that sits a left-hand menu of expandable subject folders, plus System Messages, User Messages and a table of the contracts you can see, all filtered by your role. The folders a practice works in are Activity (claims, PINs, WebEDI), Clinician, Contract, Provider, My Profile, Payments, Pensions, and, in Wales only, Empty Appointments (Wales).
None of it is a patient register. There is no permanent NHS dental practice registration in England or Wales, so an NHS dental registration form at your front desk secures nothing lasting. What is genuinely electronic is the online FP17 or FP17W, mandatory for new courses since 1 May 2019, the emailed account activation form, and, in Wales, the e-form for empty appointments. Welsh patients register with the Dental Access Portal, not with you.
A failed Compass submission does not bounce back at you. It changes status to Failed Validation, stays exactly where it was in Activity Search (Detail), and waits. If nobody amends it, the system clears it automatically once it is over six months old, and the money goes with it. Nobody sends a reminder.
So: confirm the claim is there in Activity Search (Detail), read the status under Processing Details, and if it says Failed Validation, read the error code returned. Codes are not this page's job: the error and comment code documents, and the deadline arithmetic that goes with them, sit in our guide to the FP17 rejection code table and resubmission deadlines.
If the claim is not there at all, check who created it before blaming the transmission. A claim keyed by a provider or participant user on someone else's behalf, on the Activity Creation screen, does nothing until the clinician authorises it under Activity Authorisation Search. A claim keyed on Activity Creation (Clinician) processes instantly, no authorisation needed. One bracketed word between two screen names, and a fortnight of claims sitting invisible.
On EDI, NHSBSA draws the boundary itself, so check the transmission in your own system first. A file may take a number of hours to appear on Compass, and separately, allow at least 48 hours before the cut-off for an electronic claim to be received and processed. Claims must be submitted or amended by midnight on the processing cut-off date to reach the next schedule, and NHSBSA keeps the current dates as a live table. If a transmission fails close to one, key the claim into Compass instead.
NHSBSA's own words: NHS Dental Services are unable to advise on EDI transmission issues.
Which makes your practice management software supplier, not NHSBSA, the right first call when a whole file fails to arrive. For Dentally practices, that call goes to Dentally.
The six-month clock is the part worth engineering against. Compass will not chase a failed claim, so the check has to live somewhere else: a standing job in the practice diary, or the software that submitted the claim in the first place.
In Dentally, each claim's status and any NHSBSA comments show on the patient's NHS tab, and the NHS Claims Report sorts claims by state and practitioner. Claim statuses are refreshed daily in England and Wales but vary in times for SCotland and Northern Ireland.
Yes, in part. NHSBSA's NHS Dental Services covers England, Wales and the Isle of Man, so a Welsh practice's Compass account, claim validation and payments run through NHSBSA, whose Provider Assurance team also runs the Welsh assurance exercises (NHSBSA's own description of running Welsh assurance work on behalf of the Health Boards).
Setting the rules and holding the contract are somebody else's job.
Four bodies, one Welsh practice. NHSBSA runs Compass, validation, payment and assurance. Welsh Government sets the contract and the charges. The Local Health Board holds the contract and creates the Compass account. NWSSP Primary Care Services administers the performers list applications. PCSE has no role in Wales.
Welsh Government sets the policy and the charges in Welsh Statutory Instruments. The seven Local Health Boards hold the contracts, which is why your practice leaflet must name the Board (the requirement for a practice's patient leaflet to name its Local Health Board), and each Board carries the statutory duty to prepare, maintain and publish the dental performers list (the regulation placing the dental performers list duty on Local Health Boards).
At the bottom of the Compass menu in a Welsh practice sits a folder no English practice has: Empty Appointments (Wales), live since 1 April 2025. Every field is mandatory and only a submission marked Completed counts; anything else attracts no payment. Empty slots and did-not-attends (DNAs) are fundable only where they relate to a New Urgent Patient allocated through NHS 111 or the Health Board urgent care route; routine DNAs are not claimable. Three indicators are Wales-only: Welsh DAP New Patient (9185), Welsh New Urgent Patient Referral (9186) and Patient Did Not Attend (9187).
The FP17W runs to 11 tabs, two with no English equivalent: Care Packages, and the assessment the form calls ACORN. Nothing validates until the Clinician Declaration is complete, and an overdue ACORN returns as a comment on the next pay statement rather than a rejection, one of [STAT REQUIRED: number of additional ACORN-related comment types NHSBSA lists on the summary of forms processed] types. The change most likely to have quietly raised a Welsh failure rate is the NHS Number, mandatory on any FP17W with a Date of Acceptance on or after 1 April 2026 (NHSBSA's May 2026 completion guidance for the FP17W (PDF, V6.1)). Codes 1111111111 and 4444444444 substitute for consent not given and number not found; the second must not be used just because nobody asked.
Banding fields survive for legacy courses only, which throws people who know bands went: 1, 2 or 3 for a banded course started before the reform and unfinished, 0 for any course with a last visit date on or after 1 April 2026. Wales's Regulation 11 box, the replacement appliance one, must not be
selected on or after that date; a care package goes in instead. Regulation numbers do not travel between nations.
Dentally documents how NHS Wales treatment plans work before and after 1 April 2026 in the app, including the move from bands to care packages.
Compass is practice-facing. The Dental Access Portal is not. Built by Digital Health and Care Wales, DAP signs patients in with a one-time passcode, still carries a BETA banner and is where Welsh patients join the queue for NHS care.
Practices must publish its address in the practice leaflet. A DAP-registered patient allocated to you carries the Welsh DAP New Patient indicator on their first course of treatment, and only the first.
The other two nations work nothing like this. Northern Ireland claims go to the Health and Social Care (HSC) Business Services Organisation, on form HS45 by EDI, through the FPPS Dental Payments Portal or on paper. An incorrect EDI claim is auto-returned by 8am the next day: the opposite of a Welsh claim sitting silently at Failed Validation. Scotland runs through Practitioner Services, part of Public Services Delivery Scotland since 1 April 2026, under the Statement of Dental Remuneration (SDR), on GP17 forms through eDental. Its dental PIN works the other way round from the Compass EDI PIN, a per-claim electronic signature the dentist enters each time and no system may store.
Detail sits in our guide to claiming in Scotland and Northern Ireland through SDR and HSC eClaims.
From 1 April 2026 Wales stopped charging by treatment band. NHS dental charges in Wales now run on fixed care packages, capped at a maximum total charge of £384 for a course of treatment (or multiple courses of treatment delivered at the same time).
A recall is £25.00 per visit, a new patient assessment £27.21 and urgent care £37.50 (the current Welsh NHS dental charges set out in the 2026 Regulations).
The 12 NHS Wales dental charges for 2026 by care package, with the patient charge and the laboratory-charge exclusions. Source line beneath the table: Welsh Government, NHS dental charges and exemptions, last updated 27 July 2026, and W.S.I. 2026/37 Schedule 5, Table 1 as substituted by W.S.I. 2026/49
|
Care package |
Patient charge |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
|
New patient assessment |
£27.21 |
|
|
Recall |
£25.00 |
Per visit |
|
Urgent care package |
£37.50 |
|
|
Simple restorative care package |
£36.03 |
Up to a total of 4 teeth |
|
Extensive restorative care package |
£68.75 |
5 to 8 teeth |
|
Periodontal care package |
£48.53 |
|
|
Stabilisation care package |
£75.00 |
7 or more decayed teeth |
|
Denture care package |
£86.40 |
Laboratory charges excluded |
|
Anterior root canal care package |
£91.18 |
Up to 2 teeth |
|
Posterior root canal care package |
£182.72 |
Up to 2 teeth. Laboratory charges excluded |
|
Crown, bridge, inlay, onlay and veneer care package |
£140.44 |
Up to 2 crowns or a 3-unit bridge. Laboratory charges excluded, temporary restorations excluded |
|
Miscellaneous care package |
£25.00 |
Laboratory charges excluded |
Excluded laboratory charges are paid separately unless the patient is exempt. The figures look arbitrary because they are halves: a patient who pays for NHS treatment in Wales pays 50% of the value of their care package, reduced from the 55% first proposed, and never more than £384 however much care they need.
Two exemptions differ from England in ways that show at the front desk. Free examinations go to anyone aged under 25 or aged 60 or over, and treatment that follows is charged: read Welsh Government's guidance on who gets a free NHS dental examination for the exact wording, which is easy to misread. Remission certificates carry Welsh names too, HC2W for full and HC3W for partial, not England's HC2 and HC3. One route to stop offering: the NHS tax credit exemption is no longer accepted on a course with a Date of Acceptance on or after 6 April 2025.
More on checking NHS exemptions and eligibility before you claim.
None of it reaches your bank account without the form. The care package selected in Treatment Category and on the Care Packages tab decides which charge applies, and only one of Urgent Care Package or Non-Urgent Care Package can be crossed. The Welsh Regulations also require the practice to declare on the form which recall interval the patient is on, supported by a risk-assessed recall following NICE guidance. Where an exemption or remission is claimed, one of the FP17W tick boxes has to be selected. Dentally applies a recorded exemption to every NHS treatment plan automatically.
One rule catches referring practices: where a patient starts a course with you and is referred elsewhere for part of it, only one charge may be made, and only by the practice that started it. See also tracking NHS dental referrals and why they get rejected.
Figures checked on 28 August 2026 against gov.wales (last updated 27 July 2026) and the legislation.gov.uk effects feed for W.S.I. 2026/37. No amendment is pending, and no next uprating date has been announced.
Three of the failure points on this page are structural. The Compass account and who can unlock it, the performers list application, and the charge the patient pays all sit outside any practice management system, whatever else it can do.
The rest happen at the moment a claim is created, which is the moment the software is in the room.
What the practice keeps is the Compass login, the performers list, the conversation about what the patient pays, and the declaration that the claim is right.
NHSBSA's answer to a file that never arrives is your software supplier, so choose one that is fully integrated with NHS in England, Wales, Scotland and HSC in Northern Ireland: see NHS-integrated practice management software for England, Wales, Scotland and HSC in Northern Ireland.
Compass is the online system NHSBSA gives dental practices in England, Wales and the Isle of Man for running an NHS contract: claims in, statuses out, payments and superannuation recorded against it. It has been live since February 2016 and opens in a web browser.
The FP17 is the electronic activity submission a practice makes through Compass for a completed course of NHS treatment. England uses FP17 and FP17O, Wales FP17W and FP17OW. Paper stopped being accepted for new courses on 1 May 2019. Rejections sit in our FP17 rejection code table and resubmission deadlines. <!-- LINK DEPENDENCY, job 1.3: same anchor as section 5. Hyperlink to https://www.dentally.com/en-gb/insights-hub/fp17-rejections-resubmissions once that URL resolves. -->
In Compass the performer number is called the Personal ID. Select Clinician, then Clinician Search, then Search: your details populate the screen and the number appears in the Personal ID column. It is six digits, issued when a dentist becomes an NHS clinician, and never changes.
Look in Activity rather than Clinician: select Activity, then Clinician PIN request, with Reset PIN to issue a replacement. One clinician holds one EDI PIN across every contract they work under, and it stays valid until someone resets it. That reset lands on all of those contracts at the same moment.
Yes, in part. NHSBSA runs the Compass account, validates claims and makes payments for Welsh practices, and its Provider Assurance team carries out the Welsh assurance exercises on behalf of the Health Boards. Welsh Government sets the contract and the charges, and the Local Health Board holds the contract.
From 1 April 2026, treatment bands were replaced by fixed care packages. A new patient assessment is £27.21, a recall £25.00 per visit and an urgent care package £37.50. The maximum is £384 for a course of treatment, or multiple courses delivered at the same time.
Already using Dentally? Fix these in the app: fixing an Invalid PIN claim error in Dentally and how NHS Wales treatment plans changed in Dentally from 1 April 2026.