Getting started with client billing

Billing your clients is essential to getting paid for each appointment. This guide outlines the client billing process, from setting your rates to keeping track of your invoices.

• Creating an online payments account
• Setting your rates
• Indicating a client’s Billing Type as Self-Pay or Insurance
• Creating and sharing invoices with clients
• Sharing billing documents with clients 
• Collecting payment
• Marking invoices and appointments as Paid
• Using client billing and income reports
• Additional resources

Creating an online payments account

To begin billing clients, create an online payments account to easily charge your clients and receive payouts through SimplePractice. To set up an Online payments account and provide details for verification:

1. Navigate to Settings > Payment processing > Online payments
2. Verify your email address and phone number
3. Enter your business, bank, and personal details
4. Upload documents to verify your identity
5. Click Save

For detailed instructions, see Getting started with online payments.

Note: If you choose not to create an online payments account, you can still record client payments and select External Card, Cash, or Check as the payment method when adding a payment.

Setting your rates

Set your practice-wide rates for your services and products so that, when you create new appointments, your rate for each service code is already populated. To do this:

1. Navigate to Settings > Services and products > Services
2. Click Add service
3. Use the dropdown menu to select a service code

4. Add a description, rate per unit, default duration, and other booking options
5. Click Save

For additional details, see Understanding services and products.

When creating a new appointment, you also have the option to update the fee before scheduling. To do this:

1. Click + > Schedule appointment
2. Update the Fee

3. Click Done

Indicating a client’s Billing Type as Self-Pay or Insurance

For each client, you can indicate whether they’ll be paying your full service rate or a copay through insurance. This helps to make sure that their client balance and insurance balance (if applicable) is accurately calculated.

To do this:

1. Navigate to the client’s Overview page > Edit client > Billing and Insurance
2. Under Billing Type, select Self-pay or Insurance

3. Click Save Client

For additional details, see Billing and Insurance.

Creating and sharing invoices with clients

To let clients know how much they owe for each appointment, you can create an invoice. An invoice includes:

• Date(s) of service
• Issue date
• Balance owed
• Product add-ons
• Customizable information fields

Note: The client’s balance will reflect the total invoiced amount due. If an invoice hasn’t been created for an appointment, that amount will be reflected as an Uninvoiced amount instead. 

Most practices choose to have invoices automatically created at the end of the day. If you collect payment at the time of the appointment, Daily invoice creation is the best option to select. To set up automatic invoice creation:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client billing and insurance > Client billing documents
2. Under Automatic invoice creation, select Daily, Monthly, or Manually

For more information about Simple Invoicing, see Using Simple Invoicing. If you’d like to automatically create invoices monthly, see Setting up automations for billing documents.

You can also manually create an invoice through the Billing hub, where you can view all appointments that still require invoices. To do this: 

1. Click Billing from the left navigation menu
2. Select Appointments
3. Click Create invoice for a client’s appointment

Tip: You can also use the filters at the top of the page to find a certain appointment. You can filter by date range, client, insurance payer, clinician, or payment status.

For more information about the Billing hub, see Managing client and insurance billing from the Billing hub. For other ways to create invoices, see Creating invoices.

Sharing billing documents with clients

There are 3 types of billing documents that you can use to keep track of client payments:

• Invoices
• Statements
• Superbills 

To learn more about each of these, see Understanding invoices, statements, and superbills.

After a billing document is created, you can send an email notification to your client or their contact so they can view it in their email, or in the Client Portal.

Each billing document can be shared manually or shared with your clients automatically. To learn more, see Setting up automations for billing documents.

Collecting payment

Important: An invoice is required to record a client’s payment for an appointment. For more information on creating invoices for clients, see Creating and sharing invoices with clients.

There are 3 ways to collect payment:

• From the client through the Client Portal
• Adding the payment manually
• Through AutoPay

Adding the payment manually

You can add a payment on behalf of the client from the Billing hub.

1. Click Billing from the left navigation menu
2. Select unpaid appointments from the Outstanding section
   • This will take you to your Appointments page

3. Click Add payment for the appointment

4. Select the method of your client’s payment:
   • Online Card: Choose this option to charge a client’s credit, debit, or FSA/HSA card via your online payments account
   • External Card: Choose this option to record a client credit card payment made using a third-party credit card processor
   • Cash
   • Check

Important: Selecting External Card, Cash, or Check as the payment method when adding a client payment won’t charge the client’s card. Select Online Card to charge the client’s card on file through your online payments account.

5. Click Add payment

For more information about the Billing hub, see Managing client and insurance billing from the Billing hub. For other ways to add payments manually, see Adding a client payment.

Through AutoPay

AutoPay is an easy way to automatically collect card payments. If AutoPay is enabled for a client, the default credit card stored in their profile will be charged their full invoiced amount overnight.

Note: An online payments account is required to charge clients via AutoPay.

To learn more about setting up AutoPay, see Getting started with AutoPay.

If you already have AutoPay set up, you can view more information about your Online Payments and AutoPay settings by clicking its shortcut at the top of the Billing hub.

From the client through the Client Portal

If you have an online payments account and a client or contact has access to the Client Portal, they can have the option to pay the balance themselves. To do this, they can click Pay Now in the Client Portal, or when viewing the invoice.

For your clients and their contact(s) to pay via the Client Portal, you’ll need to make sure they have Client Portal access, and that they have the permissions to access the client’s billing documents and pay a balance enabled.

For clients, see Inviting clients to the Client Portal and Managing Client Portal permissions for a client.

For contacts, see Managing contact profiles.

Marking invoices and appointments as Paid

When full payment is received for an invoice, the invoice will automatically be marked Paid.

In the Appointments page of the billing hub, appointments that have been paid in full will also automatically be marked Paid.

Note: If the invoice was partially paid, the Paid amount and Unpaid amount will also appear for the appointment.

You can also view whether a client has paid for their appointment from the client’s Overview > Billing page.

Using client billing and income reports

SimplePractice offers many reports to keep track of how your business is doing at Analytics > Reports. You can use the Billing reports to track billing information. These reports include:

• Outstanding balances
  • This report provides an overview of the amounts that are still owed by clients and insurance
• Client invoice aging
  • This report lists amounts owed out-of-pocket by clients, with respect to time
• Clinician invoicing (Group practices only)
  • This report shows the total amount of invoices for the selected time period
• Invoices
  • This report shows the status of every invoice in your account

To learn more about these reports, see Understanding your billing reports.

Once you start recording client payments in SimplePractice, you can leverage your Income reports for additional insight. Understanding what’s in these reports can help leverage the payment data present in your account to improve the billing process for both clinicians and clients. To learn more about each income report, see Understanding your income reports.

Additional resources

The workflows presented in this guide provide a high level overview of the client billing process in SimplePractice. You can also attend our Getting Started with Billing and Payments – On-demand class. To view our full list of classes, see Live Q&As and On-demand classes.