Creating and sending journals

Clinicians can create customized journals in SimplePractice and share them with clients through the Client Portal. This guide covers how to add or create a journal template, send it to a client, and prepare journals for regular completion.

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
• Completing a journal as a client
• Preparing journals for clients to fill out regularly

Adding the journal template from the template library

To create a journal, you can begin by adding a journal template to your account from the available pre-built templates.

To add this template:

1. Navigate to Settings > Documentation > Template library
2. Click Browse pre-built templates

3. Under the Intake forms section, locate the Food Journal Week 1 template
4. Click +Add

After you click +Add, you’ll return to the template library page, where Food Journal Week 1 will appear under your Intake forms.

Here, you can:

• Customize the title and contents of the template
• Preview the template
• Duplicate the template to regularly share it with clients
• Delete the template

For more information on these options, see Creating a new template and accessing the template builder.

Creating your own journal template

If you’d prefer to create a brand-new journal template, see Creating a new template and accessing the template builder. When you're taking the steps to create a new template, we recommend selecting Intake document as the template type.

Sending a journal to a client

After you've confirmed any updates to your journal template, you can share it with a client. To do this:

1. Navigate to the client’s Overview page
2. Click Share in the top right corner
3. Under Questionnaires, select the journal you’d like to send

4. Click Continue to Email > Continue to Review > Share & Send Now

Note: To learn more about sharing forms, see Sending intake forms and documents to clients.

Completing a journal as a client

Once you've shared the journal, your client can complete and submit it through the Client Portal. To do this, they can:

1. Log into the Client Portal
2. Navigate to the Documents tab
3. Select the journal under Needs to be completed

4. Fill in the appropriate fields
5. Click Review to see their answers
6. Click Edit or Submit

Important: While completing the journal, clients can click Edit to make changes. They should only select Submit when the form is completed. After submitting, they will no longer be able to make changes.

Preparing journals for clients to fill out regularly

If you’d like clients to complete journals regularly, you can duplicate the original journal template and share copies as needed. To do this:

1. Navigate to Settings > Documentation > Template library
2. Click the duplicate icon next to the journal template

3. Select the duplicate copy of the template

4. Update the title and content of the template
5. Click Save

Note: You can duplicate the journal as many times as needed.