If you’re interested in collecting client payments once a month, and are comfortable with seeing possible client balances accruing before collecting payments, you can set up automated client billing on a monthly basis.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Setting up monthly generation of invoices
• Collecting payments from clients
• Setting up monthly generation of superbills and statements

Setting up monthly generation of invoices

Invoices can be automatically generated every month to reflect your clients’ appointments. To do this:

• Navigate to Settings > Billing and Services > Settings
• Scroll down to the Invoice Settings section
• Select Monthly under Invoice Creation

Invoices will automatically be created for your clients on the first day of each month. Before an invoice is created, the total amounts owed for all uninvoiced appointments will appear as an Uninvoiced amount in the client’s Overview page, rather than the client balance.

Once the invoice is automatically generated, the Uninvoiced amount will move to the Client balance.

For example, let’s say that you have four appointments in April, each for $150. With every appointment that passes, the Uninvoiced amount will accrue an additional $150.

At the end of April, the client will have a total Uninvoiced amount of $600, while the client balance remains at $0. Once an invoice is created on May 1st, the Client balance will appear as $600, and the Uninvoiced amount will disappear.

Note: For more information on how balances appear on a client’s Overview page, please see Reviewing a client’s billing summary.

Collecting payments from clients

When a client has a balance, this can be resolved by recording a payment for the unpaid invoice(s). This will mark the invoice(s) as Paid. You have multiple options for charging and recording payments:

• To manually record, or charge a payment via Online Payments, please see our guide on Adding a client payment
• To set up automatic charges for a client’s invoices, please see our guide on Getting started with AutoPay

If a client or contact has access to billing documents, and the ability to make payments in the Client Portal, they can also mark an invoice as Paid themselves. To set this up, please see Having clients pay through their Client Portal.

Note: Clients can learn more about making these payments in our guide on Billing in the Client Portal. 

Setting up monthly generation of superbills and statements

Like invoices, superbills and statements can be automatically generated on a monthly basis. This can be set up for both existing and new clients.

To set this up for an existing client: 

• Navigate to the client’s Overview page > Edit > Billing and Insurance
• Check the box next to Automatically create monthly Statements for this client and/or Automatically create monthly Superbills for this client
  

To set this up for new clients:

• Navigate to Settings > Billing and Services > Settings
• Scroll down to the Billing Documents for New Clients section
• Check the box next to Statements for new clients and/or Superbills for new clients
  

You can also choose the day of the month in which superbills and statements are automatically generated. To do this, scroll down to Automatic Statement Generation and/or Automatic Superbill Generation, then select the day of the month for generation:

Tip: We recommend scheduling the automatic generation of monthly superbills and statements after the typical period of when payments are collected. For example, if payments for last month’s appointments are recorded within the first two weeks of the following month, you can automatically generate monthly superbills and statements after day 14 of the following month. This will make sure the billing documents reflect all of the client’s payments.