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 Overview page
- 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
Note: In December of 2023, we began a phased rollout to customers with a change to our navigation menu to simplify the customer experience. If you don’t see this in your account yet, but would like to use it immediately, please submit a help request for assistance.
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 +New Client
Next, you'll be taken to the calendar flyout where you can select the client type as an Adult, Minor, or Couple.
Adult client
After you select Adult as the Client type, enter the client's information, including:
- Legal first name
- Legal last name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Billing type
- Primary Clinician, if you’re in a group practice
- Location
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 both upcoming appointments and appointment cancellations, as well as one form of phone-based (voice or text) reminder. Incomplete document reminders can only be sent through text and email.
To learn more about appointment reminders, see How to set up appointment and time of scheduling reminders. To learn more about incomplete document reminders, see Setting up reminders for clients to complete their intake forms.
Once you’ve set up your client, click Continue to save their profile.
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 Adult clients.
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 clients 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 Overview page
When you click a client’s name in your account, you’ll be brought to their Overview page. Here, you can view, edit, and manage the client’s 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 the client Overview page, see Navigating the client Overview page.
Navigating your Clients and contacts list
Your Clients and contacts list allows you to access your clients’ basic information and navigate to their client Overview page.
You can filter by:
- Clinician (for group practices)
- Clients, Contacts, Clients and contacts, Recently viewed clients, Inactive clients, or Waitlist clients
- Insurance payer
Note: Insurance payers will only populate in this view if they're saved in a client's Insurance Information.
The list can also be sorted by first name or last name.
You can manage each client directly from your Clients and contacts list. To the right of each client’s name, click Manage to:
| View Client |
Clicking View Client will navigate you to the client’s Overview page |
| Edit Client info |
This will bring you to the client’s Client Info tab |
| Merge with duplicate |
If you have a duplicate contact profile, you can merge it with the existing client |
| Add this Client to a Couple |
If you’ll be seeing an existing client as part of a couple, you can link their client file to the couple |
| Make inactive |
Instead of deleting client’s you won't be seeing, you can make the client inactive |
Merging duplicate contact profiles
Duplicate contact profiles for the same individual can cause confusion and difficulty accessing the Client Portal.
Important: Merging profile information cannot be undone.
To merge contact profiles from the Clients and contacts list:
- Navigate to Clients
- Toggle on Show X possible duplicate clients or contacts in the banner:
- Click Manage > Merge with duplicate next to the contact profile you’d like to merge
- Check the boxes for the files you want to merge
- Click Preview merge
- Select Confirm merge
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. Doing this will allow you to retain the client’s information, but you'll be able to use one file for future documentation. 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 Inactive clients.
Note: If a client is marked as 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 Manage > Make inactive.
Note: Inactive clients can still access their Client Portal unless you disable this access when you make them inactive. You can also 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 navigation bar and filter Clients to Inactive clients.
To reactivate a client:
- Navigate to the Clients tab
- Filter Clients by Inactive clients
- Select the inactive client in question
- From the client’s Overview page, click Edit
- Under Client Status, choose Active
- Click Save Client
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?
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
-
Toggle Show X possible duplicate clients or contacts to On
- Next to the client or contact in question, select Manage > This is not a duplicate