When you sign in to your SimplePractice account, you’ll be taken to your calendar, where you can view and manage appointments for your practice. In this guide, we'll cover:

• Scheduling a new client appointment
• Creating a recurring appointment series
• Editing an appointment
• Reflecting client information changes on future appointments
• Deleting an appointment
• Creating a calendar event
• Managing out of office blocks

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 + Create 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 client appointment by checking the All day box. To learn more, see Creating a calendar event.

• 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 Recurring
• Update the service code from the Add services dropdown menu and adjust the Fee as needed
• Click Done

You can also create appointments for a group of clients. For more information on this, see Enhanced Client Management for group appointments.

Appointments will affect your availability for online appointment requests for that day. To learn more, see Managing your Availability.

Tip: Appointments may appear in different colors depending on their appointment status. Additionally, if you’re on the Plus plan, other colors can also indicate the clinician or the service code for the appointment. To learn more, see Using calendar color coding filters.

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 Recurring

• Choose how often and when the appointment 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 100 events.

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, confirm if you want the changes to apply to just the one appointment or to all appointments in the series.

After you’ve made your selection, click Move.

Note: If you edit the fee for an appointment that already has an invoice attached to it, a new invoice is needed to update your client's balance. You can manually create a new invoice for this appointment, or have it automatically created as a fee adjustment invoice if you have automatic invoicing enabled.

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 once more by recreating any invoices or superbills. For detailed instructions on this process, see Creating invoices and 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 for individual appointments.

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 above.

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

Deleting an appointment

Important: When deleting a recurring series, selecting All of the series, including past appointments will delete all past appointments without an attached progress note or invoice. Attached claims will be retained, but all other details will be removed. 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 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 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. 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 entire practice 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 a calendar event

Creating a calendar event lets you block off time on your calendar that isn't associated with a specific client, such as for a personal meeting or a dentist appointment. 

Note: If you’re on the Essential or Starter plan, you can set up a calendar event to indicate that you’re out of office. If you’re on the Plus plan, see Managing out of office blocks below.

To create a calendar event:

• Navigate to your Calendar
• Click + > Schedule appointment
  • Alternatively, you can click on a free space anywhere on the calendar
• Select Event

• Edit the title, date, time, duration, and location of the event, as needed
  • Check the box for All day if the event will span the entire day
  • The Video office location for Telehealth won't be available for selection, even if you have this location enabled
• Click Done

After creating a calendar event, it’ll be displayed as a dark 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 calendar event series. To do this, check the box for Recurring when you're scheduling the event.

You can select how often and when the appointment repeats, and when the recurring series will end.

A calendar event will block off your Availability for that event’s duration, regardless of any Availability you have set up for the day.

An All day calendar event will appear at the top of the day(s) as a dark gray bar.

Note: If you’re part of a group practice, calendar events 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 Using your calendar in a group practice.

Managing out of office blocks

If you’re going to be unavailable and out of office, you can indicate this with an out of office (OOO) block on your calendar. That way, clients won’t be able to schedule appointments with you at that time.

Note: OOO blocks are only available on the Plus plan. If you’re on the Essential or Starter plan, you can add a calendar event to indicate that you’re out of office.

To do this: 

• Click + > Schedule appointment from the top of the page
• Choose Out of office

• Select the day and time frame in which you’ll be out of office
  • Check the box for All day if you’ll be out for the entire day
    • You can choose multiple days where you’re out all day
• Use the dropdown menu to select yourself or a team member that will be out of office

Note: Only the Account Owner, clinician with entire practice access, clinician with full client access, or a practice scheduler can set up OOO blocks for other team members.

• If you want appointments canceled during the time selected, leave the box for Cancel appointments during this time checked
• If you want to notify clients and contacts that their appointments have been canceled, leave the box for Notify clients and contacts of cancellation checked
• Click Done

Your OOO block will show as light gray on the calendar.

When Cancel appointments during this time is checked, appointments marked as Show during the OOO block will update to Clinician canceled. If the OOO block is deleted, appointments will continue to appear with this status.

Note: To update each appointment to the correct status, see Changing an appointment’s status.

If the box for Cancel appointments during this time is unchecked, appointments will retain their current status. 

When Notify clients and contacts of cancellation is checked, clients and contacts that have cancellation appointment reminders enabled will receive a notification of the cancellation. Clients and contacts that don’t have these reminders enabled won’t receive this.

Once an OOO block is set up with this option checked, a small green banner will appear to show that the cancellation messages have been sent.

If client(s) under the OOO block don’t have cancellation reminders enabled, you’ll see a window displaying these client(s)’ names.

While OOO blocks are viewable to all team members, they’ll have different permissions for OOO blocks depending on their roles: