Invoicing in Private Practice
The way you choose to invoice clients will depend on the way you want to run your private practice. Will you have regular weekly clients? Will you see your clients in person? Will you work with adolescents or children? Will you work solely online? Will you accept clients with medical insurance? Will you have a client management system?
Invoicing in Private Practice can be completed in many ways
In today’s blog, I am going to outline some different ways you can decide to invoice your clients. Add your invoicing process to your paperwork and also add it to your welcome email when a client joins.
Per Session in Person
If you are seeing clients in person you could request that they make payment to you whilst they are at the session. This could be via a card reader like SumUp, via a BACS transfer, Invoicing App, cash, or even going old school and accepting cheques. I wouldn’t recommend cheques!
I always recommend raising an invoice for clients. This can be created easily with an invoicing app like Stripe, Square, Invoice2Go or if you bank with Starling their business toolkit. If you don’t want monthly payments or transaction fees, creating an invoice using Word can be quick and simple with a template.
You’ll also need a process in place for those who don’t pay and if you accept medical insurance when you’ll invoice those clients. You can read more about How to Organise Medical Insurance Clients.
Per Session Online
If you do not see clients Face to Face but also don’t have a client management system you could still ask clients to make payments per session. This could be completed via a BACS transfer, PayPal, or via a virtual terminal like SquareUp.
You will require a process in place for exactly when you need the client to make payment by. Before the session, during the session, or by x amount of days after. If you can send the invoice out along with the online call link.
I would recommend doing a check once a week for outstanding payments for the previous week rather than checking before each session if a client owes you money.
Ahead of Time
If you have regular clients that you see on a weekly / biweekly basis you could request that payments are made for the following month sessions ahead of time. This can be achieved by raising manual invoices (using an invoice template) or via a payment platform like Stripe.
Planning Ahead
This can be an excellent way to invoice as you can plan your month’s cash flow and know exactly what you’re going to earn. It can also elicit more commitment to therapy and the sessions when clients commit to a weekly slot and pay for a batch upfront.
Retrospectively
Once a client has attended a session you can send a bill to the client or the client’s guarantor. This can be completed on a session by session basis or at the end of the month.
It can be completed manually with a BACS payment request or you could use an online payment platform like PayPal or Stripe.
This does have a natural downside with the work being completed and clients then disappearing. I would not recommend this for the first session with a client. This can work well if a client does have a guarantor as they will just get one bill a month which in my experience they prefer.
Via an Electronic Health Record (EHR) System
Having an EHR system can offer you an array of different features. You can read more about this here. If you allow clients to book sessions themselves you can ensure they pay for those sessions there and then. If you want to take control of your bookings the systems will either enable you to insert a payment link into confirmation and reminder emails (which are sent automatically) or you can create and send invoices directly from the system.
Power Diary syncs with Stripe for payments but there are others as well. Do your research into EHR systems and ensure they have all the features you require in all areas of your Private Practice.
Conclusion
There are lots of ways you can choose to complete your invoicing in Private Practice. My advice is to pick the one that feels right for you at this stage in your Practice and see how it goes. In my experience clients will allow you to change the way you invoice as long as it’s easy for them.
For a more in-depth look at Invoicing in Private Practice, you can download my free document. It goes into more detail about the pros and cons of each way listed above and also the pros and cons of ways to accept payment.
Whatever way you choose to invoice, actually create an invoice. If you allow people to pay by session and it's in cash what will happen if they query what they’ve paid you? You’ll have to trawl through your bank account looking for their payments and matching them up to their appointments. Believe me, that’s very time-consuming. Keep a log somewhere of what invoices have been sent and when they were paid.
If you are looking for an invoicing template. I have an easy to customise invoice document and log to keep track of all the invoices and payments made for easy bookkeeping.
