In SimplePractice, there's no limit to the number of clients you can create and store in your account. This provides a HIPAA compliant space to store client documents, billing and insurance information, and much more.
In this guide, we'll cover:
- Adding a client
- Sending an intake
- The client profile
- Navigating your Clients and contacts list
- Merging duplicate contact profiles
- Removing a duplicate client
- Adding a client's name that differs from their legal name
- Making a client inactive
- Deleting a client
- FAQs
Adding a client
There are two ways you can add a new client in your SimplePractice account.
From the top navigation bar:
- Click the + icon
- Select + Create client
While scheduling an appointment:
- Navigate to your calendar
- Select the time slot you’d like to schedule
- Click + Create client
Next, you can select the client type as an Adult, Minor, or Couple.
Adult client
If you select Adult as the Client type, enter the client's information, including:
- Legal first name
- Legal last name
- Billing type
- Client status
- Primary clinician, if you’re in a group practice
- Location
- Email address
- Phone number
To enter the client’s email address and/or phone number, click + Add email or + Add phone, and designate a Type and Permission.
You can add additional email addresses or phone numbers as needed.
Important: If the client would like to receive email/text/voicemail reminders and notifications, you’ll want to select Email OK, Text / voicemail OK, Text OK, or Voicemail OK as the Permission for the client’s email address and/or phone number.
There are three types of reminders you can enable for your clients:
- Upcoming appointments
- Incomplete documents
- Cancellations
To turn on reminders when creating a client:
- Toggle Upcoming appointments, Incomplete Documents, and/or Cancellations to On
-
From the dropdown menus, choose an email address and/or phone number for each type of reminder
- If the client doesn’t want to receive a reminder type via email or phone, select No email or No phone
Note: Clients and contacts can receive email reminders for upcoming appointments and cancellations, as well as one form of phone-based (voice or text) reminder. Incomplete document reminders can only be sent through text and email.
Once you’ve set up your client, click Continue to save their profile.
To learn more about appointment and incomplete document reminders, see Setting up appointment and time of scheduling reminders and Setting up automated reminders for clients to complete their intake forms.
Minor client
If you select Minor as the Client type, enter the minor client's information on the tab labeled Client. To enable appointment and document reminders for the minor, follow the above steps for an Adult client.
Important: If the minor client shouldn’t be receiving reminders, make sure that Do not use is designated as the Permission for the client’s email address and phone number.
If the minor has a parent or guardian who’ll be managing their appointments or is responsible for billing, you can add them as a contact from the Contact tab. To enable appointment and document reminders for the contact, follow the above steps for an Adult client.
Once you’ve entered the minor client’s and contact’s information, click Continue to save your new minor client.
Note: To learn about adding an existing client as a contact and managing minor profiles, see Adding a new minor client.
Couple client
When you select Couple as the Client type, you'll see tabs for Client 1 and Client 2. Enter client information on each tab and check the box next to Responsible for billing for one of the clients.
Note: A couple profile can’t be created until a client is designated as Responsible for billing. To learn more, see What does it mean to choose who is "Responsible for billing"?
To enable appointment and document reminders for either client in the couple, follow the same steps for an Adult client in the respective client’s tab. Both clients in the couple can receive these reminders.
Click Continue to save the new couple profile.
Note: For more information about couple client profiles, see Enhanced Client Management for couples.
Sending an intake
If you've entered an email address for your new client, you can grant Client Portal access and send intakes. This process is divided into three steps:
Client Items
Here, you can select which intake forms, consent documents, and questionnaires to send to your client. You can also choose to send the Demographics form and Credit card information form, which will automatically populate information into the client's profile once completed.
Note: The Credit card information form can only be sent if Online Payments is enabled in your account. For more information on using our integrated online payments processor, see Getting started with Online Payments.
After you've made your selection, click Continue to Email.
Note: You can also send or resend documents from the client Overview page if you forget to send them in the initial intake packet. For more on sending intakes and consent documents, see Sharing documents with existing clients.
Compose Email
On this tab, you can customize the message in the email that’ll be sent to the client with your practice documents.
If you’d like to adjust the default text of this email for your entire practice, go to Settings > Client notifications > Emails and click Edit on the Welcome email. For more information, see Customizing the Welcome message.
Note: You can’t view the text of a customized email after it’s been sent. If you'd like to determine if an email was sent, you can view this in your Account Activity and the Sent emails report. To learn more about Account Activity and Reports, see Account Activity: Tracking changes and information access in your account and Understanding your clients and appointments reports.
Review & Send
On the Review & Send tab, you can review the Welcome email by clicking View Message, and confirm which intake and consent documents you’re about to share.
After you've reviewed this information, click Share & Send Now.
The client profile
When you click a client’s name in your account, you’ll be brought to their profile. From a client's profile, you can view, edit, and manage their billing information, documents, and notes.
You can also expand or reduce your view of the items in the right navigation panel by clicking the arrows.
In the right navigation panel, you can view, edit, and manage the following information:
- Client billing
- Insurance
- Client info
- Contacts
- Upcoming appointments
- Communication settings
- Uploaded files
- Invoices
- Billing documents
Note: To learn more about client profiles, see Editing a client's information.
Navigating your Clients and contacts list
Your Clients and contacts list lets you access your clients’ basic information and navigate to their profile. You can filter this list by:
- Clinician, if you're part of a group practice
-
Clients and/or contacts, including the following client statuses:
- Active
- Inactive
- Prospective
- Archived
- Waitlist
-
Insurance payer
- Insurance payers will only populate in the Clients and contacts list if they're saved in a client's Insurance info
Tip: You can sort the Clients and contacts list by first or last name.
You can manage each client directly from your Clients and contacts list. To the right of each client’s name, click the three horizontal dots under Manage, then select from the following actions:
| Action |
Description |
| View Client |
Clicking View Client will take you to the client’s profile |
| Edit Client info |
This will take you to the Client Info tab of the client's profile, where you can edit their information |
| Merge with duplicate |
You can merge duplicate contact profiles with another contact profile or a client profile |
| Add this Client to a Couple |
If you’ll be seeing an existing client as part of a couple, you can create a new couple profile that includes this individual |
| Add contact |
You can add a contact for the client |
| Send Referrals |
Merging duplicate contact profiles
Duplicate contact profiles for the same individual can cause confusion and difficulty accessing the Client Portal.
Note: While you can merge duplicate contact profiles with another contact profile or a client profile, there's no way to merge duplicate client profiles. To learn how to remove duplicate client profiles, skip to the Removing a duplicate client section.
To merge contact profiles from the Clients and contacts list:
- Use the Client status dropdown to filter for Contacts
- Click Apply
- Toggle on Show X possible duplicate clients or contacts in the banner
- Click the three horizontal dots next to the contact profile you’d like to merge
- Select Merge with duplicate
- Check the boxes for the profiles you want to merge
- Click Preview merge
- Select Confirm merge
Important: Merging profiles is a permanent action and can't be undone.
Removing a duplicate client
Duplicate client profiles cannot be merged together. If you have duplicate client profiles, you can make one of the profiles inactive and keep the other profile active. By doing this, you can use one file for future documentation, while still retaining the information in the inactive profile. To learn how to make a client inactive, see Making a client inactive.
Adding a client's name that differs from their legal name
You can enter the name your client goes by in the What name do they go by? field of the client’s file.
The client’s first name will be displayed as their legal first name or the name entered in the What name do they go by? field, depending on the specific location:
- When Privacy mode is On, the calendar will display the initials from the name entered in the What name do they go by? field and their last name
- Invoices and statements will display the name entered in the What name do they go by? field
- Superbills and claim forms will display the client's legal name since insurance companies require that the client's name matches what they have on file
- The Default email sent to your clients for invoices, statements, and superbills will display the name you’ve set using the macro in the template
To display the name entered in the What name do they go by? field in these emails:
- Navigate to Settings > Client notifications > Email
- Under Billing document emails, click the pencil icon
- Highlight the macro {client_legally_admissible_first_name} in the Message field
- Use the Client dropdown menu, to select Client First Name
- Click Save
Making a client inactive
The inactive status for a client is an option to denote clients that you aren’t actively seeing or have been discharged. Making a client inactive allows you to keep the client data in your account and reactivate the client in the future. Inactive clients won’t show up in your client list unless you filter by Client status > Inactive.
Note: If a client is marked inactive, superbills and statements won’t be created for them automatically, even if they had appointments while they were inactive. A client must be marked as Active for the system to automatically create superbills and statements for them.
To make a client inactive:
- Navigate to the client’s Overview page
- Click Edit below their name
- Under Client Status, select Inactive
- Click Save Client
You can also mark clients inactive on the Clients and contacts page by clicking the Status dropdown and selecting Inactive.
Note: Inactive clients can still access their Client Portal unless you disable this access when you make them inactive. You can disable their Client Portal access from the Client Portal tab. For more information, see Disabling the Client Portal for individual clients.
To access your inactive clients list:
- Select Clients in the left navigation menu
- Use the Client status dropdown to select Inactive
- Click Apply
To reactivate a client:
- Navigate to the Clients tab
- Use the Client status dropdown to select Inactive
- Click Apply
- Click the Status dropdown next to the inactive client in question and select Active
Deleting a client
Deleting a client permanently removes them from our database and removes all of their information from your account. Only Account Owners, practice managers, or clinicians with entire practice access are able to delete a client. To learn more, see Team member roles and access levels.
Important: Deleting a client is a permanent action and cannot be undone. Another option is to make a client inactive.
To delete a client:
- Navigate to the client's Overview page
- Click Edit
- At the bottom of the page, click Delete this Client
- Choose Continue to Delete
-
Type the client's First name and Last name exactly as seen at the top of the Permanently delete client? window
- This is case-sensitive
- Check the box next to I understand this will delete the client's history and records forever. SimplePractice cannot recover this deleted information.
- Click Delete
Important: Once you click Delete, the client's file will be removed immediately. This action is irreversible.
FAQs
- Can I remove the Jamie Appleseed demo client?
- The clients or contacts that are marked as duplicates aren't actual duplicates. What should I do?
- What is the prospective client status?
Can I remove the Jamie Appleseed demo client?
Jamie Appleseed is a demo client that’s automatically enabled in every SimplePractice account. To enable or disable Jamie Appleseed and all of their demo data from your account:
- Navigate to Settings > Practice > Demo client
- Choose to either Disable Jamie Appleseed or Enable Jamie Appleseed
The clients or contacts that are marked as duplicates aren't actual duplicates. What should I do?
To turn off the duplicate client notification for clients that aren't actually duplicates in your SimplePractice account:
- Navigate to Clients from the left navigation menu
-
Toggle on Show X possible duplicate clients or contacts
- Next to the client or contact in question, click the three horizontal dots under Manage and select This is not a duplicate
What is the prospective client status?
The prospective client status helps you distinguish between clients in the early stages of onboarding and those actively receiving services.
When you receive a contact form inquiry or online appointment request from a new client, a client profile will be created for them with the Prospective status, which will appear on your Inquiries page.
Additionally, you can create a new client with the Prospective status to keep track of individuals while determining if they’re the right fit for your practice.
If a prospective client doesn’t end up becoming an active client, you can archive their profile. To do this:
- Navigate to their Overview page
- Click Edit below their name
- Under Client Status, select Archived
For more information about client statuses, see Client Info. To learn how you can use the Inquiries page to track prospective clients, see Navigating the Inquiries page.