The SimplePractice Calendar allows you to view and manage your practice’s appointments. In this guide, you'll find detailed information about managing appointments. We'll cover:

• 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 maintain 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 homepage
• Click + Create > 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, select the checkbox for Repeat
• Update the service code from the Services dropdown menu and adjust the Rate as needed
• Click Done

Note: Appointments will affect your Availability for online appointment requests for that day.

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 homepage
• Select the appointment you need to edit
• Edit as needed

• Click Done

If the appointment is part of a recurring series, you’ll be asked if your changes should be applied to just the one appointment or to all appointments in the series.

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. 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 or a locked and signed progress note. To unlock, make edits to, and re-lock an appointment:

• Navigate to the Calendar homepage
• Determine whether the appointment has documentation associated with it
  • If the appointment has an invoice or superbill attached, you can delete the billing document by opening it and clicking the trash can icon
  • If the appointment has a locked progress or psychotherapy note, you can unlock the note by Amending, correcting, or clarifying a locked note

• You can make desired edits to the appointment in question
• Re-create the appointment documentation by opening the Calendar flyout for the appointment or navigating to the client Overview page

Deleting an appointment

To delete an appointment:

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

• Select Delete Appointment to confirm

If an appointment is locked, you’ll be prompted to delete any associated document(s) before you delete the appointment: 

Important: This modal will only appear for team members with access to the associated document(s).

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: 

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, you can then delete the appointment if your permissions allow. For more information on permissions, see Team member roles and access levels.

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

Creating an Other appointment

Creating an Other appointment allows you to block off time on your calendar that isn't associated with a specific client, such as a personal meeting or appointment.

Other appointments are displayed as gray events to clearly differentiate them from your client appointments.

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 homepage
• Click + Create > Schedule appointment
• Select the Other appointment type

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

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

• Navigate to your Calendar
• Click the Other appointment
• Check the box for Repeat

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

Tip: If you’re planning on being out of the office for multiple days, you can create an Other appointment and check the All day box. 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

If a client's billing or insurance information changes, updating the information in the client's Billing and Insurance tab won’t automatically update the client's future appointments. To have the updated information reflect for future appointments, you must:

• Delete all future appointments, including recurring appointments
• Recreate the appointments on the calendar

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