What are Invoices, Statements, and Superbills?

This article will provide some terminology and a breakdown of each type of billing document available to you in SimplePractice, including their purpose and structure.  While many people use "invoice" and "statement" interchangeably, these are different documents with different purposes and understanding the difference will help you streamline your billing.

Invoice

An invoice is a bill.  This document creates a financial obligation to your client alerting them that they owe you money for services or products rendered.  You can only have a date of service on one invoice at a time.  In SimplePractice, you can manually generate invoices or set up the system to auto-generate them on a daily or monthly basis.  

Invoices include: 
- Dates of service
- Product add-ons
- "PAID" designation if the entire invoice has been paid
- Ability to add custom notes in the Notes section
- Ability to edit service descriptions
- Ability to edit Client and Provider information 

Click here to read more about how to use invoices in SimplePractice.

Statement

A statement is a snapshot of the total owed by a client at any point in time.  In SimplePractice, you can create a statement with a specified date range whenever you'd like.  The statement will include any client transactions that occurred during the specified time frame, including invoices and payments.   While you can create a new statement at any time, you can also choose to have SimplePractice automatically create invoices on a monthly basis (to be mailed, shared via the Client Portal, or emailed).  

Statements include:
- Previous and Ending Balances for the time frame selected
- Itemized Invoices detailing charges
- Payments made during that time period
 
Click here to read more about statements.   

Superbill

A Superbill, also known as a Statement for Insurance Reimbursement, is a document that the therapist provides to their client for insurance reimbursement.  This document is similar to a statement, but provides additional information like CPT codes and a client's primary diagnosis code.  You can have SimplePractice generate a superbill on a monthly basis or you can choose to create them manually as needed.  

Click here to read more about how to use Superbills.

Superbills include:

1. Diagnosis Code (currently only the primary code will appear)
2. Client Insurance Information, if desired
3. Client DOB
4. CPT Codes and descriptors
5. Amount charged and payments received
6. Reimbursement Recipient