Getting started with SimplePractice: Part 2 - Expanding your account

Now that your account is set up, you can configure additional settings to support documentation, billing, and how clients interact with your practice. Once your settings are configured, your account will be ready for working with clients.

To expand your account:

• Customize your templates
• Set up the Client Portal
• Set up billing and online payments (if you’ll be charging clients)
• Add practice-wide insurance information (if you’ll be billing insurance)
• Add team members (for group practices)

Customize your templates

If you'll be creating and completing documentation, you can use documentation templates and intake documents when working with clients.

Add templates for documentation

SimplePractice includes pre-built templates you can use as a starting point for your documentation.

To use a pre-built template, you can first add it to your template library. To add a template to your library:

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

3. When browsing, you can:
   • Filter templates by specialty using the View all professions dropdown
   • Preview a template by clicking the eye icon
4. Click + Add next to a template to add it to your template library

You can also customize pre-built template in your template library, or create a new template from scratch. To learn more, see Creating a new template and accessing the template builder.

Review and update client intake documents

Intake documents are forms you can send to clients, such as intake forms (questionnaires) and consent forms.

Important: Your account comes with several consent forms by default. These consent forms include placeholder content. Before sharing these with clients, review and update them to reflect your practice, policies, and any legal or regulatory requirements.

To review or edit an intake form:

1. Navigate to Settings > Documentation > Shareable documents
2. Click the three dots next to the form in question
3. Select Preview or Edit

Note: Scored measures can't be edited.

To add a new consent form or read-only uploaded file, select + New consent form or + Downloadable file.

From the Shareable documents page, you can select which intake documents are set as default. These will be automatically included when sharing intake documents with new clients.

For more information, see Sending intake forms and documents to clients.

Set up the Client Portal

The Client Portal is where clients can complete forms, send messages, and manage appointments and payments.

It’s enabled for your account by default. Before sharing the Client Portal with clients, review your Client Portal link so it reflects your practice. 

To update your Client Portal domain:

1. Navigate to Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Client Portal permissions
2. Under Default domain, click Edit 

3. Enter the name you’d like to use in your Client Portal link

4. Click Save

This will update the link clients use to access your Client Portal.

Important: We recommend setting and locking your Client Portal link before sharing it with clients. If you change it later, the link your clients use to access the Client Portal will also change.

You can also review the default Client Portal greeting at the bottom of the Client Portal permissions page. This is shown to clients when they first sign in.

For more information, see Setting up the Client Portal. 

Set up billing and online payments

Set up your billing so you can track client balances and charge clients through SimplePractice.

Important: Complete this step even if you plan to bill insurance, as clients may still be responsible for part of the cost of care.

Billing documents

Billing documents, like invoices and statements, are used to track what clients owe and what they’ve paid.

You can set up automation to choose how and when billing documents are created for your clients. To do this:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client billing and insurance > Client billing documents
2. Choose when invoices are created under Automatic invoice creation
   • We recommend keeping the default option of Daily, with Simple invoicing
3. [Optional] Adjust settings for statements and superbills
4. Click Save changes

You can also review additional billing automations, such as when billing notifications are sent and how documents are delivered to clients, at the bottom of the Client billing documents page.

For more information, see Setting up automations for billing documents.

Online payments

Online payments allow you to charge clients’ cards and collect payments directly through SimplePractice.

To set up online payments:

1. Navigate to Settings > Payment processing > Online payments
2. Click What do I need to complete setup? to review the required information
3. Click Set up online payments

4. Follow the prompts to submit your business, banking, and identity information

After submitting your information, our team will verify your account. This typically takes 2-3 business days. Once your account is verified, you can begin processing payments.

For more information, see Getting started with online payments.

Add practice-wide insurance information

If you plan to bill insurance, add your practice’s insurance information so it can automatically populate your claims and superbills.

Important: The information you enter must match what insurance payers have on file. We recommend confirming your billing details with payer(s) before completing this step.

To add your insurance billing information:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client billing and insurance > Insurance billing
2. Enter your practice’s:
   • Organization NPI, if applicable
   • Tax ID or SSN

3. Under Billing provider info, click Edit

4. Select Individual or Organization, depending on how you bill insurance

By default, your practice-level clinician information will appear in the Billing provider info fields. If this information doesn't match what insurance payers have on file, you can edit this:

5. Toggle off Use practice-level clinician info

6. Enter your billing provider details:
   • NPI
   • Taxonomy code
   • Address
7. Click Save profile
8. Click Save changes in the top right corner

If you have a group practice, you can add billing information for additional clinicians as billing profiles after adding your team members.  

For more information, see Getting started with insurance billing.

Add team members (for group practices)

If you have a group practice, you can add clinical or non-clinical team members to your account. You can skip this step if you don’t plan on adding any team members to your account.

Each team member must be assigned at least one role, which determines what they can access in your account. A team member can be assigned a clinical and/or non-clinical role.

To add a team member:

1. Navigate to Settings > Team > Team members
2. Click Add team member
3. Enter the team member's first name, last name, and email address
   • The email address must be unique and not already associated with another SimplePractice account

4. Click Continue
5. Check the boxes for the team member’s role(s)
   • If you checked Clinician, select a clinical role based on the appropriate access for the team member

Note: You can assign one clinical role and/or one or more non-clinical roles

6. Click Continue
7. [Optional] Toggle on additional permissions, then Continue
8. If the team member is a clinician, enter their clinician details, then Continue
9. Click Send invitation

After the team member accepts their invitation, they’ll create their login and access your practice. 

For more information on adding team members, see Adding and managing team members. Most roles can be removed or re-added for a team member at any time. 

For guidance on setting up your account as a group practice, see Setting up a group practice account in SimplePractice.

Next steps

Before working with clients, make sure you’ve set up:

• Your intake documents and Client Portal link
• Your documentation templates (if you plan on completing documentation)
• Your billing documents and online payments (if you plan to charge clients)
• Your information for billing insurance (if you plan to bill insurance)
• Your team members (for group practices)

Once you're ready to work with clients, you can transfer your clients from another EHR or platform. To do this, see Transferring client data from another EHR. If you'd prefer to manually add clients to your account, see Adding a new client.