Most therapists I have worked with encounter similar issues when it comes to payments. Keeping track of payments, constantly checking their bank accounts, potentially missing payments or even overlooking whether they have received payments at all!

These problems can result in poor cash flow with their business, unpredictable earnings and the absolute time suck that is dealing with late payments.

In fact my first job for a therapist was solely working on their invoicing and getting payments under control AND it’s the reason most clients come to me in the first place.

I’m going to give you all my top tips on how you can do the same!

Have an invoice and payment policy

The most important thing is to actually have an invoice and payment policy.  It almost doesn’t matter what it is but you need to write it down, you need to communicate it and you need to enforce it. So how are you going to do that?

You need to make sure that it is included in your welcome email, in your paperwork and also communicate this to clients in your intro call with them, if you have one. It needs to be part of your onboarding process and, if you don’t officially have one of those, checkout this blog post about how you can create one.

Send a physical invoice

You are a business and as a business you should be sending physical invoices, not only does it look more professional but people are more likely to pay them.  These can be digital and you can either make your own invoicing template or buy one, but you need to be sending them and be clear about when you expect them to be paid.

You can also use a specific invoicing system like Stripe or Paypal, which do take a fee, but if you think about how much time and energy you will be saving and how much more likely your clients will be to pay, this may well be cost effective for you. 

You will also want to keep an invoicing log so you know which invoices have been sent and whether they have been paid or are still outstanding and stay on top of it weekly.

I do have an invoice template available here if that would be useful to you.

Offer different ways for clients to pay

Different clients are going to find different payment options easier. Whether that’s paying by cash or card or making a BACS transfer.  You can also use an online payment system like Stripe which means you can add a link to pay in the actual invoice. This makes it much easier for clients to pay immediately.

I do not recommend accepting cash! This will be a real headache for you to stay on top of as you will have to actually take it to the bank and pay it in so you have a record of it.  This is time that could be better spent so it actually costs you to accept cash. It can be inconvenient for your clients to get cash as well.

When I initiated Stripe payment for one of my clients they went from 60% of clients paying on time to 90/95%  and saved her own time by not having to chase the other 40% for payment. A huge win!

Charge in blocks

At the moment you may be accepting payment on a session to session basis which is time consuming for both you and your client. You have to create the invoice and they have to find the time to pay.

This can be reduced by invoicing monthly or in blocks of, say, six sessions at a time.  I find that a lot of people budget monthly so this works really well. Whether you choose to do this in advance or retrospectively is up to you.

If you require less payments from your clients they are more likely to pay on time.

Send payment reminders and consequences

In the first instance you can be really gentle with your clients and just send out emails that say, this payment seems to have been missed, could you please kindly make the payment within X amount of time. 

If it becomes a regular thing, you will want to have actual consequences, for example halting sessions until payment is received. You may need to speak to the client about it in session and ask what the problem is around payment.

It may be that they simply can’t afford it any more and you may want to move them to a lower fee or see them less frequently.  If that’s not the issue there may be another way you can help them, like block invoicing. Maybe you will need to pause sessions with the client or add late payment fees, you can find information about that on the government website here.

If the absolute worst comes to it you can get a debt agency involved.

Outsource

It might take you a long time to do your invoicing, but outsourcing to someone who does invoicing on a regular basis means that they will complete the task faster. It also creates that separation for your clients around money. It means that they can transfer any annoyance they feel around being reminded to pay to your Virtual Assistant and not to you, protecting the therapeutic alliance.

If you have any anxiety around asking for money it can also be easier for you to outsource that to someone who is more detached from the situation. 

Conclusion

They are my top tips for invoicing in private practice and getting your clients to pay on time.  If you are struggling with this please know that you aren’t alone! It’s the most common reason people hire us as virtual assistants.

If you’d like to purchase the invoicing template I have created you can do that here.