If you’re planning a leave of absence, taking a few steps to prepare your SimplePractice account can help ensure a smoother experience for you and your clients while you’re away.
Below, we'll cover:
Preparing your SimplePractice account
Before your leave begins, review the following automated settings to avoid interruptions or confusion while you’re away.
Verify that all appointments during your absence are removed
- Check your calendar to confirm there are no appointments scheduled until your return date
- If needed, navigate to Settings > Client Notifications > Email to toggle off email reminders
Important: For group practices, turning off practice-wide settings will impact all team members.
Turn off online appointment requests
Turning off online appointment requests prevents clients from requesting appointments while you’re unavailable.
- Navigate to Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Client Portal permissions
- Toggle off Online appointment requests
- Click Save changes
Note: This also disables new client appointment requests from your Therapy Finder profile. Your profile will remain visible, but it will indicate that you’re not currently accepting new clients.
Turn off Secure Messaging
To prevent clients from sending messages while you’re away, you can turn off Secure Messaging.
- Navigate to Settings > Messaging > Secure messaging
- Toggle off Secure Messaging with Clients
Reverifying your online payments account
If you use online payments, accounts are automatically flagged as inactive after 60 days without activity. If your leave will last longer than 60 days, submit a help request when you return to have your online payments account reverified.
Note: After your account is reverified, the first charge must be processed within 24 hours or the account will be flagged as inactive again.
FAQs
Do you have a pause or storage option?
If you’re considering pausing your account or reducing your subscription plan, you can submit a help request so our Customer Success team can review the options available for your account.
If you'd like to keep your account active at a lower cost during your leave, you can switch to the Starter plan for $49/month. Some features included in the Essential and Plus plans won’t be available while on Starter, but full access will be restored if you upgrade again. To learn more about our plan options, see Subscription plan and pricing FAQs.
What happens if I cancel and recreate my account?
If you decide to cancel your account, we strongly recommend exporting your data before canceling. Once an account is canceled, the data in that account can’t be recovered. If you return in the future, you’ll need to create a new SimplePractice account and upload any previously exported data.
For step-by-step instructions, see Exporting client information through data exports.