Dental Financing in Scottsdale, AZ
 Dental financing at Dental Works in Scottsdale, AZ means two outside lenders, CareCredit and Sunbit, that let you spread the cost of treatment across monthly payments instead of covering it the day it happens. Neither is our money and neither is our decision. The loan is between you and the lender.
Most people land on a page like this after hearing a number they were not ready for. That is a normal place to be. A crown, an implant, a rebuilt arch: these arrive as one amount even when the problem itself built up across years.
Financing is one of three levers and it helps to know all three before picking. Insurance covers part of some treatment. Our Dental Savings Program reduces the fee itself if you carry no insurance. Financing reduces nothing, and handled carelessly it adds; what it changes is when you pay. Those are different tools, they do not all stack, and the sections below get into which combinations actually work.
On This Page
How Dental Financing Works at Our Office
CareCredit and Sunbit do the same basic job and go about it differently, which is why we carry both instead of picking one.
CareCredit
CareCredit is a healthcare credit card issued by a bank and usable at any provider that accepts it. Its defining feature is promotional financing: a window of six, twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four months during which you pay no interest provided you clear the entire balance before the window closes. It is the older and better known of the two, and for someone with solid credit who can commit to the payoff schedule, it is often the cheaper route. The word carrying the weight in that sentence is provided, and the cost section below explains why.
Sunbit
Sunbit is a point-of-sale installment lender rather than a credit card. You apply at the office, and an approval comes back as a fixed set of monthly payments over a set term. Sunbit weighs more than a credit score when deciding, which is why it frequently works for patients a traditional card turns down. Its application uses a soft credit check, so applying by itself does not move your score.
Which one we point you toward depends on your credit picture, the size of the plan, and how confident you are about clearing a promotional window. The choice is yours, and it is worth making on the terms rather than on the brand you recognize.
Financing comes up most around treatments that arrive as one number instead of spreading across visits: dental implants, All-on-4, and full mouth reconstruction. Invisalign is the other common one, and it carries a wrinkle worth knowing: many dental plans cap orthodontics under a separate lifetime limit rather than counting it against the annual maximum, which is what your plan will pay toward everything else in a year.
Who Talks You Through the Numbers
The cost conversation happens before treatment rather than at checkout, and it happens with a dentist rather than getting handed off to someone who was not in the room.
Dr. Terry Work founded this practice in 1994, and with two dentists and no associate rotation, the person who quotes you a number is the person who will do the work. His bio page covers his training.
Dr. Mary Ann Work has practiced since 1993, and patient education is what her own bio leads with. On a long treatment plan that means walking through it line by line instead of handing over a total. More on Dr. Mary Ann Work’s bio page.
The application itself runs through the front office, where insurance verification and lender paperwork are handled by the same person. That matters more than it sounds: the amount you finance should be what is left after benefits, not the figure before them.
Applying for Financing, Step by Step
 The whole thing usually happens in the office during the same visit as your treatment plan, and a decision typically comes back in minutes rather than days.
Get the Real Number First
Before any application goes in, we work out what the treatment actually costs you after insurance. Our benefits coordinator, who you will find on the Meet the Team page, verifies coverage with your carrier directly. Financing the pre-insurance figure is a mistake worth avoiding, and it happens whenever the paperwork gets done in the wrong order.
Apply at the Office
Both applications happen here rather than at home, which is deliberate: questions come up, and answering them in the room beats trading emails. Bring a photo ID and the basic information any credit application asks for. Sunbit runs a soft credit check, so submitting it does not affect your score on its own. CareCredit is a full credit application and does show up as an inquiry.
Read the Terms You Are Given
The lender sets your rate, your term, and your promotional window, not us, and all three vary by applicant. Whatever comes back on the screen is the real agreement, so read it there rather than trusting a summary from anywhere else, including this page. The line to find is what happens after the promotional period ends.
Schedule the Treatment
Once approval comes through, we book. You do not have to finance the entire plan either. Some patients finance the portion insurance will not cover and pay the rest outright. Some phase a large plan across two calendar years so the second half draws on a fresh annual maximum.
What Financing Makes Possible
The honest benefit of financing is not that it makes treatment cheaper. It does not. What it does is remove the reason people wait, and waiting is what turns a manageable problem into an expensive one.
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Treatment on the clinical timeline - a cracked tooth gets crowned when it cracks rather than when the money is there
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The whole plan instead of pieces - phasing treatment purely for budget reasons sometimes costs more than doing it once
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A payment you can plan around - a fixed monthly figure is easier to budget than an unexpected total
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Approval without a perfect credit file - Sunbit in particular weighs more than a score, which widens who can move forward |
The counterweight is that financing is debt, and debt has a cost even when the promotional rate reads as zero. If treatment can safely wait six months while you save for it, saving beats borrowing, and we will tell you when something can wait. Not everything can. A tooth with an infection in it is the clearest example, and our page on dental abscess treatment explains why that particular clock does not stop.
Why Our Patients Use These Options
Both programs are here because the alternative is watching people leave with a treatment plan they never come back for. That is the quiet failure mode in a dental office, and across three decades of practice in Scottsdale it is the reason to carry two lenders rather than one.
We do not lead with financing. The conversation only comes up when the number is the problem. If you can pay outright without straining anything, that is the simplest route, and nobody here is going to talk you out of it.
What we will not do is quote you a monthly payment without the total attached. A payment figure with no principal behind it is how people end up surprised, and it is a sales technique rather than an explanation. Financing is one of several things a new patient has to sort out, and our Patient Info page collects the rest of them in one place.
What Financing Actually Costs You
 Here is the part that matters most and gets explained least. CareCredit’s promotional offers are deferred interest, not zero interest. Those are not the same thing.
During the promotional window, interest accrues quietly in the background. Pay the entire balance off before the window closes and that accrued interest is waived, and you paid nothing extra. Fall even slightly short on the final day and the full amount that built up across the whole period gets charged retroactively, calculated from the date of purchase. Not on what is left. On the original amount.
That is not a scam and it is not hidden; it sits in the terms. But it catches people, and it catches them at the worst moment. If you use a promotional offer, divide the balance by the number of months and pay that figure every month rather than the minimum, because the minimum payment on a deferred-interest plan is often set lower than what clearing the balance in time requires, which the lender’s own disclosure will spell out.
Sunbit’s installment plans work differently, with a fixed term and a payment schedule built to retire the balance by design. Some Sunbit offers may carry promotional structures of their own, so read the terms you are handed rather than the terms described on a page like this one. Your rate depends on your application either way.
One more thing worth knowing before you choose: our Dental Savings Program cannot be combined with financing. The plan’s own terms exclude using it alongside a financing program, so it is one route or the other. Run the arithmetic on both before committing to either, and call (480) 391-0099 if you want help doing it.
Ask About Financing Before You Decide
The worst version of this is finding out the options existed after you already declined treatment. Bring it up at the consultation. Ask the front desk at (480) 391-0099, or book through our Request an Appointment page and raise it at the visit. We are at 9070 E Desert Cove Ave, #A101, Scottsdale, AZ 85260. Questions before booking go to the Contact page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will applying for dental financing hurt my credit score?
Applying is only half the question. A credit inquiry is a small, temporary mark that fades over months, so the application itself is rarely what people should worry about. What moves a score more is what comes after: a new revolving balance counts toward your credit utilization, which carries more weight than an inquiry does. An installment plan behaves differently from a card in that respect. Your lender can tell you exactly how yours will report.
How long does approval take?
Usually minutes, at the front desk, while you are still in the office. Both are built to give an answer during the visit rather than after it, which is the point of applying here instead of at home. If something needs extra verification the timeline stretches, but the common case is that you know before you leave.
What happens if I am declined?
We try the other one, because approval criteria differ and a decline from one is not a decline from both. If neither works out, the conversation shifts to sequencing: what genuinely has to happen now, what can wait for next year’s insurance benefit, and whether the Dental Savings Program changes the arithmetic. A decline closes one door, not the appointment.
Can I use financing along with my dental insurance?
Yes, and the order matters. Insurance pays its portion first and you finance whatever remains. Financing the full treatment cost before benefits are applied means borrowing money you did not need to borrow, and that happens more often than it should when nobody verifies coverage up front. Get the post-insurance number, then apply.
Do I have to finance the whole treatment plan?
No, and there is a smaller question worth asking alongside it: whether the plan has to be done all at once in the first place. Some treatment is genuinely sequential and some is bundled for convenience. Ask which parts are urgent and which can wait a year, then finance only the urgent part.
Does Dental Works have an in-house payment plan?
The two options named here are CareCredit and Sunbit, both outside lenders. The Dental Savings Program is a different thing entirely: a discount on the fee itself rather than a way to pay over time, and it cannot be stacked with financing. If your situation does not fit any of those cleanly, ask at the front desk rather than assuming, because the answer depends on the case.
Which is better, CareCredit or Sunbit?
Neither, in the abstract. The rule of thumb: if your credit is strong and you are confident you can clear the balance inside the promotional window, CareCredit’s promo is usually the cheaper path. If your credit is thin or imperfect, or if you would rather have a fixed payment that simply ends on a known date with no deadline attached to it, Sunbit removes the risk the promotional structure creates.
Why does Dental Works offer two financing options instead of one?
Because one lender declines a meaningful share of applicants, and a decline usually ends the treatment conversation rather than redirecting it. Carrying both means the next sentence is let us try the other one, instead of come back when you can afford it. It also means the choice gets made on which terms fit you rather than on which single contract the office happens to hold.
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