Insights
Building SwissAligner’s Aligner CRM
Technical deep dive: stack, billing engine, stripping V1→V2, and how dentists and patients stay on one record.
The setup
SwissAligner produces clear aligners and the software practices use day to day: intake, treatment planning, stripping, collaboration, and billing. The same platform also reaches patients directly through a mobile companion for follow-up, chat, and invoices.
The constraint was coordination — paper stripping plans, scattered updates, and data re-entered in more than one place. The client needed one coherent system, not another disconnected dashboard.
What was breaking down
Orthodontists drew stripping plans by hand. Admin chased updates across channels. Case management and billing lived apart from patient follow-up.
Every hour spent reconciling information was an hour not spent on patients or production.
Stack & architecture
Aligner CRM is a modern web application for lab and dentist work — cases, dashboards, quotations, invoicing, and doctor billing — with JWT auth and optional realtime discussion.
The patient companion is a native iOS and Android app from one Ionic + Capacitor codebase, wired to the same CRM database as the dentist platform. No parallel patient database: capture, chat, invoices, and reminders write to the same case record dentists already use.
Hosting for sensitive data stays in Switzerland (Infomaniak), with GDPR-oriented access controls.
Records, chat & clinical flows
Inside the product we built ERP-style flows: radiography, pricing, treatment steps, imagery, stripping plans, comments, and in-context chat so partner practices coordinate in one workspace instead of reconciling across tools.
Dashboards surface cases, follow-up status, and revenue so daily production work stays in one UI.
Billing engine
A case becomes a quotation, clinical report, and invoice in a few clicks. As soon as the invoice is generated, it is emailed to the dentist — cutting the old multi-day post wait.
Case invoices then roll into a consolidated dentist bill the practice can tailor by time frame and drill into by invoice and patient before sending. Cabinet invoices are issued straight to patients.
That split — professional settlement for dentists, direct billing for walk-in / cabinet patients — is why cash collection and admin load both improve without two separate systems.
Stripping plans — design evolution
The client asked us to digitize stripping plans inside Aligner CRM, replacing a manual workflow orthodontists used to draw by hand on paper. Below: the first delivery (V1), then V2 after UX rectification for clearer navigation and readability.
First in-product version of stripping plans on Aligner CRM, built to match what the client specified when moving the process from paper into software.
After review and rectification, a clearer layout and overview so dentists scan stripping steps faster and with less friction.
One record for dentist and patient
Live-camera check-ups (gallery uploads blocked) let practices confirm aligner wear without a routine clinic photo visit. Chat, invoices, and push reminders stay attached to the same case the dentist sees in Aligner CRM — one source of truth, zero duplicate entry.
How we work on projects like this
We start from a business constraint, not a feature list. Map who touches what data, remove duplicate entry, ship something the ops team can run without us in the loop.
For SwissAligner that meant a production CRM for practices, a billing path that matches how money actually moves, digitized clinical plans, and a companion app that extends the same database to patients — product UX for daily use, not a one-off marketing site.