Automatically Charge Clients for Appointments

Healthie comes with built-in payment processing support, enabling providers to bill for one-time and recurring self-pay services. Client Packages can be created to bundle appointments and services together, and then offered to clients to self-purchase and book. Providers can also invoice for services.

Additionally, providers have the ability to set a price for appointment type(s), and automatically schedule charges for clients on a per-session basis.

Note: This setting is separate from the main automated billing feature that you use to automatically create and submit CMS 1500s to bill insurance.

This article reviews how to configure an account to support automatic charging for appointments.

Enable Pricing for Appointments

Within Appointment Settings, account admins will see the option to enable Pricing per Appointment Type. This setting must be enabled in order to set a price per appointment type.

For multi-provider teams, this setting will be enacted for all team members.

Set a Price per Appointment Type

Within Appointment Types Settings, account admins can edit specific appointment types to add a set rate.

Edit a specific appointment type > Pricing > Set Default Price

Advanced Pricing Options

Within Appointment Settings, there is the option to enable more advanced pricing options, depending on your business needs.

Situational Pricing allows you to charge different rates based on providers or specific clients.

Adjust Pricing Per Provider

For multi-provider organizations, it may be preferred to charge differently for an appointment type, depending on the provider.

This can be done within Settings > Appointments > Payments and Credits > Situational Pricing

Learn more on adjusting appointment rates per provider here.

Adjusting Pricing per Client

If preferred, a custom price can be determined on a per client basis, for any appointment types.

This can be done within Settings > Appointments > Payments and Credits > Advanced Pricing

Learn more on adjusting appointment rates per client here.

Adjust Pricing Based on Appointment Duration

If you've set a custom price for an Appointment Type, you have the option to automatically adjust that price based on the actual duration of a session. The most common use-case is to charge clients more if the session went over on time.

For example, if the default price was set to $100 for a 1 hour session, the client would automatically be charged $150 if the appointment was recorded to be 1 hour 30 minutes in duration.

Learn more about pricing based on appointment duration here.

Enable Automatic Billing for Appointments

Within your Payments and Credits Settings, enable the option to Automatically charge for appointments set as occurred. Automatic charges include automatic appointment charges and recurring packages (e.g. meal plan subscriptions and programs).

The Automatically charge for appointments checkbox controls whether a client can be automatically charged for one of the options below. If the setting is turned ON clients will automatically be charged:

For appointments set as occurred
If a package has been set up to have recurring billing

Note: If a client’s auto-charge setting is OFF, the client’s credit card(s) will not be automatically charged.

When you set an appointment as occurred, a client who has a valid payment card on file will have a charge scheduled for the day after tomorrow.

These charges will automatically post to the Payments page. The description will always be designated as Appointment, and will include the date of the associated appointment.

Clients will automatically receive an email notification and receipt of the automatic charge, once processed.

Enable Automatic Invoicing for Appointments

Automatically invoice client needs to be turned on in order to automatically send a client an invoice when you set an appointment as occurred. This setting is independent from the automatically charge for appointments setting.

Note: If the auto-charge setting is turned ON but there is no card on file, and the auto-invoice client is turned OFF, no action will be taken for the occurred appointment. The automatically invoice client setting must be turned ON in order to automatically send an invoice for an occurred appointment.

Invoices generated will be sent to the client via email.

Learn more about automatically invoicing clients.

"Automatically invoice appointments marked occurred" is only available on Plus plans and above. To access this feature, upgrade you plan by logging in and navigating to the gear icon (top right). Select subscription from the dropdown menu and follow the prompts.

Coming Soon: Account for Credits in Automatic Charging

Use Client Credit System setting has been updated within the Payments and Credits tab in AppointmentSettings to enable credits to be accounted for when booking appointments and in the case of no-show orlate canceled appointments. This setting can be found following the pathSettings>Appointments>Payments and Credits>Use Client Credit System.

When enabled, this setting allows tracking in the client profile of how many sessions a client has purchased or has remaining at any given time. If used in conjunction with automatic charging or automatic invoicing, credits will take priority.

When an appointment is added to the calendar and “Use Client Credit System” is enabled, a credit from that appointment type’s pool is automatically deducted if there are credits available. If there are no credits available to deduct, the client will receive an automatic charge to the payment method they have on their account.

When marking an appointment “Occurred”, “Late Cancellation”, or “No-Show”, you will receive an alertnotifying that the client will not be charged or invoiced for the appointment because a credit has alreadybeen deducted from their account.

Trigger an Automatic Payment or Invoice

Automatic billing for appointments is tied to your calendar. An appointment status must be set to Occurred. A notification banner will appear, confirming that an automatic payment (or invoice) will be rendered.

Manage a Scheduled Payment

As with any scheduled payment, providers have the ability to take further action to manage the payment, or stop the payment, before the payment occurs.

From the Payments page, click the [...] next to the payment. A drop-down with available actions will display, including:

Option to export to a Superbill (payment will still process)
Option to send a receipt to the client (clients will automatically receive a receipt of payment via email)
Option to download a receipt
Ability to stop the automatic payment (payment will not process)
Option to edit the payment details
Option to delete the payment (payment will not process and will no longer display on the Payments page)