In this blog, I am going to outline four ways to hold boundaries with Private Practice clients using admin procedures.

There are decisions you will need to make ahead of time and procedures in place when taking on new clients. By implementing these procedures and communicating these to clients upfront, it will be easier for you to hold these boundaries in place when you need to. 

Intro Calls

Ensure to talk to the client about your fee, invoicing procedure and cancellation policy within this call. If you like to work to a confirmed weekly or bi-weekly schedule, try and find a mutually convenient time on the call and confirm that the appointment time is theirs once payment is made. 

Don’t shy away from this, set the expectations at the outset. Being clear with your procedures and with the client will help you hold boundaries later on if needed.

Onboarding Process

Within this process the first thing to send is a welcome email that confirms all the details you discussed in the intro call:

• Their appointment day and time

• Frequency of appointments

• How they will be notified/reminded of appointments

• Invoice Process

• Attach invoice for an initial session or advise them how to make payment

• Confirm the cancellation policy

• Attach intake paperwork or advise how this will be sent

There are some templates you can start with on my Onboarding blog.

Just like the intro call, outlining the important information a client would need to know upfront will help you hold firm if a client doesn’t pay or attend a session.

Therapy Agreement

Having a therapy agreement or contract is important. Firstly it will advise clients of what they can expect from you. It will confirm the details you outlined on the intro call and in the welcome email but this time the client is signing to agree with them.

You cannot guarantee that clients will always read your agreement however, asking your clients for a signature will enable you to enforce your procedures if you need to.

A system I always recommend for sending paperwork is Signable.

Some benefits of this system are:

• Cost - Each envelope you send to clients will only cost you £1 (plus VAT) YET you get loads of features that you usually only get with the higher rate options on other platforms.

• Templates - You can upload your documents and create templates so that they can be used over and over again. Saves you tons of admin time.

• Users - If you have an assistant you can add them as a user on your account for no extra charge.

• Envelopes - You are charged £1 (plus VAT) for each envelope you send but that envelope can have multiple documents or templates within it for no additional charge. Need to send a contract and a reduced fee agreement? No problem you just select the documents you want and they are all sent together in one email.

• Add a personalised message to your clients.

• Add an expiry date and automatic reminders to encourage your clients to complete quickly.

Cancellation / Non-Attendance Policy

Your cancellation policy should outline how much notice you need for an appointment not to be charged for, it should also outline how they should notify you of the cancellation. If you follow my advice in this blog, this will be advised many times to the client both verbally and written when they start. In my experience, implementing the charge once is enough for clients to notify you with notice going forward. 

A non-attendance policy states what will happen if the client doesn’t attend multiple sessions. They may have given you enough notice but they have not attended numerous sessions consecutively. You decide how many missed appointments they can have in a row before you implement the policy and what that consists of. You are holding space in your diary for clients and so this will affect your revenue if you do not have a policy for this. Ensuring this is in the agreement/contract will help you hold the boundary around it.

Conclusion

Those was four processes you can complete to help you hold boundaries with Private Practice clients using admin procedures. You may feel uncomfortable doing this at first but deciding your policies and advising your clients upfront will help you feel more confident.

If you’d like help with your Private Practice admin you can download the Private Practice Workflow workbook for free. This will take you through questions to help you make decisions on your Practice admin. Alternatively, you can book an Admin Audit with me in which we can go through your current procedures together and find ways to improve them.