Clinicians can create customized journals in SimplePractice, like Food or Sleep journals, and send them to clients to fill out via the Client Portal.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Adding the journal template from the Template Library
• Creating your own journal template
• Sending a journal to a client
• Submitting a journal as a client
• Preparing to send journals for clients to fill out regularly

Adding the journal template from the Template Library

We’ve added a journal template called Food Journal Week 1 to the Template Library. When you add this template to Settings > My Notes & Forms, you can customize it and share it with clients. To add this template: 

• Navigate to Settings > Notes and Forms > Template Library 
• Scroll down to Intake Forms and find the Food Journal Week 1 template
• Click +Add to add the template to My Notes & Forms

• Once you click +Add, you’ll be brought back to My Notes & Forms where you should see that the Food Journal Week 1 template has been added to your Intake Forms 
• Here you have the following options:
  • You can edit the contents of the Food Journal Week 1 template
  • You can Preview the template by selecting the eye icon
  • You can Duplicate the template to be able to share the template with clients regularly
  • You can Delete the template by clicking the trash can icon

Note: For more information about the options you have with My Notes & Forms, see: My Notes and Forms: Creating customized client intake and progress note templates.

Creating your own journal template

To create your own journal template from scratch, follow these steps:

• Navigate to Settings > Notes and Forms
• Select +Create New Template
• Add a title
• Use the drop down menu to designate it as an Intake Form 

• Populate the fields that clients need to fill in
• Click Save

Note: For more information about creating templates, see: Creating customized templates in My Notes and Forms.

Sending a journal to a client

To send a journal to a client:

• ​​Navigate to the client’s Overview page
• Click Share in the top right corner
• Under Questionnaires, select the journal you’d like to send

• Click Continue to Email
• Edit the email, if needed
• Click Continue to Review
• Click Share & Send now

Submitting a journal from the client's perspective

Once you've shared the form, your client will be able to fill it out and submit it through the Client Portal. To do this, your client can:

• Log into the Client Portal
• Navigate to the Documents tab
• Under Needs to be completed, click the journal to complete it

• Once the client has filled in the appropriate fields, they can save their progress by clicking Review
• The client will then be able to review their answers
• After review, the client can either Edit or Submit

Note: Clients should only select Submit & Continue when the entire form is ready to be submitted to you for review. The client will no longer be able to make changes to the form once they have selected Submit & Continue. While the client is completing the journal, they can click Edit to continue to have the ability to edit the form.

Preparing to send journals for clients to fill out regularly

If you’d like clients to be able to fill out and submit journal entries to you regularly, you’ll need to prepare multiple forms with the correct amount of fields for them to complete. The fastest way to do this is to duplicate the original journal form that you've created. To create a duplicate form:

• Navigate to Settings > Notes and Forms
• From the My Notes & Forms tab, find the original journal you created and click the duplicate icon

• A copy will appear below the original template

• Select the copy to update the name and make any other edits if needed
• Click Save

Note: You can duplicate the journal form as many times as needed. You can also choose when to send the journals to clients to fill them out.