Creating and sharing billing documents is a vital part of generating income for your practice. SimplePractice can automatically send new invoices, statements and superbills for you, as well as provide your clients the ability to manually pay their bills electronically through the Client Portal or automatically charge them via AutoPay. 

In this guide, we'll cover:

• Manually emailing billing documents
• Practice-wide billing automations
• Client-specific billing automations

Note: To learn more about different types of billing documents, see Understanding invoices, statements, and superbills.

Manually emailing billing documents

After a billing document is created, you can choose to manually send an email notification to your client if you have their email address on file. Click More > Email at the top of the screen and your client will receive an email notification that they have a new billing document:

Depending on the client’s billing settings, this notification can be an email with the document included as a PDF, or a link to sign in to the Client Portal to view the document. See the Client-specific billing automations section below for instructions on how to adjust these settings.  

Note: If the email icon isn't working, it means the client hasn’t given consent to receive emails or doesn't have an email address on file. You can view if the client has an email on file with consent granted, by clicking Edit > Client Info on their client Overview page. For more information, see the Email section of our guide on Editing a client's information.

Practice-wide billing automations

All of your account level billing automations can be found by going to Settings > Client billing and insurance > Client billing documents.

Invoices

This section allows you to choose the appointment descriptions that will display on your invoices, as well as and when to create these invoices: 

• Daily: Automatically create invoices at the end of each day. (Recommended)
• Monthly: Automatically create invoices on the first day of each month.
• Manually: Do not automate invoices. (Only recommended for practices with complex billing workflows)

Most practices choose to have invoices automatically created at the end of the day. If you collect payment at the time of the appointment, this is the recommended option to select. If you bill monthly, then monthly invoice creation is the best option for your practice.

Note: Automated invoices are generated at midnight based on your practice's location and timezone.

Automated statement and superbill generation

You have the option to pick which day of the month you'd like statements and superbills to be created for your clients automatically, in addition to having the ability to manually create statements and superbills as needed.

We recommend choosing the 1st or 2nd day of the month if you collect payments and record them at the time of an appointment. If you collect or enter client payments after the appointment, then you’ll want to select a date later in the month.

Note: Automated superbills and statements are generated at midnight based on your practice's location and timezone.

Billing document delivery delay

For your clients who receive billing documents via email or through their Client Portal, you can choose to delay the delivery of these documents. This creates a grace period between when a document is created and when it’s sent, giving you time to review the document:

Billing documents for new clients

Here you can determine the default billing settings for every new client you create:

Important: All billing documents created in your account will be accessible to your clients via the Client Portal, regardless of the delivery method you select. If you wish, you can disable this feature directly from your client's Client Portal tab.

Client-specific billing automations

You can adjust an individual client’s billing automations from their file. To do this:

• Navigate to the client's profile
• Click Edit under their name
• Choose the Billing and Insurance tab
• Indicate if you'd like to Automatically create monthly Statements for this client or Automatically create monthly Superbills for this client

• Under Email Billing Notifications choose how you'd like billing notifications delivered to this specific client

• • None: With this option, the system will rely on you to manually print, or email billing documents. If you have a client who doesn’t require any billing documents, this is the best option to select.
  • Send email with billing documents attached: With this option, the system will automatically email billing documents as PDF attachments to your client.
  • Send email with link to Client Portal: This option will automatically notify your client via email whenever a new billing document is delivered to their Client Portal. This is the most secure option and the one most practices prefer since no PHI is sent over email. This is the option to choose if you'd like clients to pay online through the portal.
    • Even if clients have automatic email notifications enabled, they won't receive any notifications for $0 invoices. These $0 invoices often caused confusion in cases where a client’s final financial responsibility is still pending insurance claims.

Regardless of which settings you choose, clients can still view all invoices, including $0 invoices, in the Client Portal at any time if they have access to view billing documents in the Client Portal. If you’d like to notify clients of $0 invoices, you can manually email them.

AutoPay

If you've already set up Online Payments for your account, you can enable AutoPay for specific clients, and we'll automatically collect their payment after an appointment. 

Note: To learn how to set up AutoPay, see Getting Started with AutoPay.

If you haven't set up your Online Payments account, you'll be prompted to set up Online Payments when you try to enable AutoPay.