When you log in to your SimplePractice account, you’ll be taken to your Calendar. With your calendar, you can view and manage your practice’s appointments.

• Scheduling a new client appointment
• Creating a recurring appointment series
• Editing an appointment
• Deleting an appointment
• Creating an Other appointment
• Reflecting client information changes on future appointments

Note: To learn how to manage your calendar as part of a group practice, see Using your calendar in a group practice.

Scheduling a new client appointment

To create a new appointment:

• Navigate to the Calendar
• Click + > Schedule appointment

Tip: You can also click anywhere on the calendar to create an appointment.

• On the New Appointment flyout, select an existing client from the dropdown menu or click + New Client to create a new client

• Set the date, time, and duration of the appointment

Note: You also have the option to create an All day appointment by checking the All day box. To learn more, see Creating an Other appointment. 

• If your practice has multiple clinicians, select a Clinician from the dropdown menu
  
  • For existing clients, this will default to the primary clinician assigned to that client 
• Select a Location from the dropdown menu if you have multiple practice locations
  
  • If this is a Telehealth appointment, select the Telehealth: Video Office location 
• To create a recurring appointment series, check the box for Repeat
• Update the service code from the Services dropdown menu and adjust the Fee as needed
• Click Done

Note: Appointments will affect your availability for online appointment requests for that day. For more information about managing your availability, see Managing your Availability.

Creating a recurring appointment series

You can create a recurring appointment series that repeats on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. To do this:

• Create a new appointment
• Check the box for Repeat

• Choose how often the appointment repeats, when it repeats, and when the recurring series will end
  
  • A series can end after a certain number of appointments occur or on a certain date
    

• Click Done

Note: You can create a recurring appointment series with up to 300 appointments.

Editing an appointment

To edit existing appointments:

• Navigate to the Calendar
• Select the appointment you need to edit

• Edit the appointment details, as needed
• Click Done

If the appointment is part of a recurring series, you’ll be asked if you want the changes to apply to just the one appointment or to all appointments in the series. Select your preference and click Change to finish making changes to the appointment(s).

Note: If you edit the fee for an appointment that already has an invoice attached to it, your client's balance will be updated to reflect this after a new invoice is generated. You can manually create a new invoice for this appointment, or a fee adjustment invoice will be generated automatically if you have automatic invoicing turned on.

If the appointment is locked, you won’t be able to edit the appointment details. An appointment is considered locked if there's a superbill attached, or if there’s a locked and signed progress note.

To unlock and edit a locked appointment:

• Navigate to the Calendar
• Determine whether the appointment has documentation associated with it
  
  • If the appointment has a superbill attached, you can delete the billing document by opening it and clicking the trash can icon
  • If the appointment has a locked progress note, you can unlock the note by clicking Unlock

• Edit the appointment, as needed

After unlocking and editing the appointment, you can lock it again by recreating any deleted billing documents. For detailed instructions on this process, see Creating superbills. Additionally, if you unlocked a progress note, you can re-lock and sign it again.

Note: To learn more about locking and unlocking progress notes, see Using progress and psychotherapy notes. 

Deleting an appointment

Important: Once you delete an appointment, this action can’t be undone.

To delete an appointment:

• Navigate to the Calendar
• Select the appointment
• Click the trash can icon

• Select Delete Appointment to confirm

Note: There isn't a way to delete appointments for multiple clients at once. Each appointment will need to be deleted individually from the appointment flyout.

If an appointment is locked, you’ll be notified that the appointment can’t be deleted due to documents related to the appointment. For steps on how to handle these documents, see Editing an appointment.

Important: This modal will link to documents that you have access to. If you don’t have access, this modal will let you know which team members do have access to the documents in question. 

The access to view and delete the document(s) associated with an appointment is dependent on your team member permissions. If you don’t have the ability to delete an appointment, the trash icon won’t display on the appointment.

Prior to deleting documents, we recommend that you reach out to the client’s clinician(s), the Account Owner, or a Clinician with Administrator Access to review the documentation attached to the appointment. If the documentation is removed, and your permissions allow it, you can then delete the appointment.

Note: For more information on team member permissions, see Team member roles and access levels.

Creating an Other appointment

Creating an Other appointment lets you block off time on your calendar that isn't associated with a specific client, such as for a personal meeting or appointment. An Other appointment will prevent that time slot from appearing as available for online appointment requests, if you have this feature enabled.

To create an Other appointment:

• Navigate to your Calendar
• Click + Create > Schedule appointment
• Select the Other appointment type

• Edit the title, date, time, duration, and location of the appointment, as needed
• Click Done

After creating an Other appointment, it’ll be displayed as a gray event to clearly differentiate it from your client appointments.

If you have a regular meeting each week and want to prevent clients from scheduling appointments at that time, you can also create a recurring Other appointment series. To do this:

• Navigate to your Calendar
• Click + Create > Schedule appointment
• Select the Other appointment type
• Check the box for Repeat

• Select how often the appointment repeats, when it repeats, and an end date for the recurring series
• Click Done

If you’re planning to be out of the office for multiple days, you can create an Other appointment, check the All day box, and adjust the end date as needed. This will block off your availability for each day you’re out of the office, regardless of any Availability you have set up for those days.

The all-day Other appointment will appear at the top of the calendar as a gray bar.

Note: If you’re part of a group practice, Other appointments will be visible to all team members in your SimplePractice account. Visibility to these appointments aren’t restricted by any access level. To learn more, see Team member roles and access levels.

Reflecting client information changes on future appointments

When a client's billing or insurance information changes, there are some details you can update in the information in the client's Billing and Insurance tab that will automatically apply to the client's future appointments. This includes updates to the client’s:

• Billing Type
• Copay

Note: For more information about editing client billing information, see Billing and Insurance.

Updates to a client’s default services will not apply to future appointments. These appointments would need to be recreated or updated to the correct service. For more information, see Editing an appointment.

Note: To learn how to make billing-related changes for past client appointments, see Appointment level billing changes.