Optimize Your Practice with a Therapy Invoice Template for Planning

Therapy invoice template for Planning

most therapists that I have worked with have a similar problem when it comes to payments whether that's just keeping on top of it constantly checking the bank missing payments whether they actually did receive them and they've missed it or they missed that they hadn't actually received it having bad cash flow in their business having unpredictable earnings and dealing with late payments in fact I started my VA career just doing invoicing the first three clients I worked with that was the job that they hired me for they had an issue where they were spending far too much time on invoicing in their private practice and so I came in and took just that part of the role over for them I never really spoke to clients other than sending them invoices or asking for payments and this was the Gateway into me kind of running the private practice from the admin side but it really did start with the therapist needing help with their invoicing for those of you who don't know me I'm Kim I help therapist get online get confident with admin and reduce Tech over well and today we're going to be talking about my top tips for invoicing and making sure that clients pay on time so the first tip I have is to actually have an invoicing and payment policy this can literally be anything but you need to write it down you need to stick to it you need to communicate it and you need to enforce it so how do you do that well to write it down you want to make sure that you put it in your paperwork to communicate it you want to verbally communicate this with your clients on the intro call on the intake session however you first see clients but you also want to put it in writing in the welcome email so we always send welcome emails when we onboard new clients and I talk more about this in an onboarding video I did but you really want to make sure that your invoicing policy is put in writing to your clients outside of your paperwork because lots of people will get your paperwork they'll skin read it if they do at all and then they'll just sign it but something as important as your invoicing policy you want to put that Forefront in a welcome email but stick into it you want to make sure you're holding up your side of it so whether that's how you will send the invoice whether that's how you will chase up unpaid invoices you want to make sure that you're actually doing your part too and we'll talk about that next and finally you want to have clear consequences for what will happen if somebody doesn't pay and again we'll talk about that more later in the video my second tip is to actually send a physical invoice now you can either create your own template you could buy a template online I have one for sale where you can just plug in your own information and send that as an invoice or you can use a specific invoicing system like stripe Paypal invoice to go there's loads and loads of options yes there will be fees for using them but if you wait up your time how much you're chasing payments and things like that I think you'll find that having the those fees will actually be less than what you are spending in your own time currently people are much likely to pay if you send them a physical invoice number one it just looks more professional but number two if somebody gets a physical invoice in their inbox they're much more likely to pay it there and then I know for me if I get an invoice I just want to do it straight away so that I know that it's done and I'm not going to forget about it I've had a number of therapists in the past and none of them have ever sent me an invoice and even as organized as I am I would get on the call with the therapist and be like I'm really sorry I haven't forgot to pay because they didn't really have a policy for their invoicing or communicate to me so I just assumed they wanted me to pay on the day that my therapy session was but inevitably I would forget to do that and so I'd be feeling really guilty and nervous about the session when that's really not how you want your clients to be feeling you want to be really clear about your invoice and policy so that they totally understand it and don't come to session worried about that or even don't turn up the session because of it a side tip from this if you are doing manual invoicing so if you're sending a template that you've created or even if you're using mine you want to also keep a log so you want to log that you sent somebody an invoice and you want to love when that payments come in so there is a little bit more admin to do for manual invoicing and if you're doing that kind of invoicing I would really suggest doing it on a monthly basis as opposed to weekly because that can really add up in admin time my third tip is to have different ways that clients can pay to make it easier for them so this could be either pay and buy back so transferring the money to you or it could be using a card so they would have a pay link they click on that pay link and they pay by card this can make it much easier for them to make the payment for you I would definitely stay clear of accepting cash for two reasons one your clients would probably have to go to a bank to get the money out and that can be really time consuming and a way that they don't want to do that whereas they can pay online anywhere you know most people have access to Internet banking on their phone and they can easily make a payment when they're in your waiting room for example also it's a real hassle for you because you have to put that cash in your bank account so that all of your bookkeeping is correct so you really don't want to add having to go to the bank on a regular basis into your schedule because that's just going to be so time consuming if you think about driving there the parking all that kind of stuff so you want to try and avoid cash if possible one of the clients I started working with only accepted backs as a way of payment and when we set up power diary for her I encouraged her to move to stripe so that we could sync invoicing and give pay links to clients so she said she would give it a go and see you know how that worked and kind of what her fees were and things like that at the time she had about 60 of clients that were paying on time that she and then she'd have to chase the other 40 when we made the switch and had regular you know invoices to the clients so they got an invoice when they got their appointment reminder they had a pay link that increased to 95 so 95 of clients paid before their next session so they'd get the invoice with the appointment reminder and 95 of them paid she only had one or two clients that regularly needed that reminder so adding in different payment methods can really help increase you getting paid on time the fourth way is to think about charging in blocks so right now you might just charge for one session at a time which can be time consuming for both you and your clients you if you're going to send an invoice like I suggested you're going to have to create that invoice each week whether that is a physical invoice you know that you're creating on a template or whether that's in stripe or some something like that that's still quite time consuming to create that invoice it's also time consuming for your client to pay each week so have a think about whether you can invoice somebody in either a monthly block or in a block of six sessions or something like that many people Budget on a monthly basis so asking for clients to pay a month in advance or a month for retrospectively again how your invoice is up to you can be easier for them to manage their own finances if you require less payments from each of your clients they're more likely to pay on time if you have an EHR though invoicing on a weekly basis can be really simple because you can just create the invoice just gets created when you create the session so it isn't actually time consuming for you and then they might have a pay link so it's easy but if you're not doing it that way I definitely would suggest looking at whether you can manage your finances better and also the clients by doing it on a monthly or a block of session basis there will be some additional admin around that if they cancel with notice and things like that but there's always going to be admin around invoicing my fifth tip is to actually send payment reminders now in the first instance you can be really gentle with this and just send a quick email and say it appears this payment may have been missed could you please kindly pay within the next 48 hours something think like that but if it becomes a regular thing you do want to actually have more consequences so you want to actually speak to the client about it in session and ask them what the issue is around paying and if there is one maybe they just can't afford it anymore and you may want to put them on a lower fee or maybe you could see them less frequently if there's no issue around them being able to afford it and there's some other problem with payments maybe there's something else you can do for them specifically maybe you want to put them on block invoicing whereas your other clients might be on individual session invoices so you'll say to the point okay what we'll do is we'll do six sessions at a time you'll pay for those six and then I'll remind you when the next payment is due because it can be a lot less stressful for you and them if there's less payments required you can obviously stop therapy with clients you could pause until they've made payment you can add late payment fees so there is a suggestion on that on the government website about how much you can add to invoices for late payment fees and finally you could go to a collection agency so if people owe you money and they are then boasted you you could go to a collection agency to get them to pay up so you do have a few options when it comes to people not paying that starts from a real gentle email reminder all the way up to getting collection agencies involved my sixth tip and I have kind of spoken about this earlier is to Outsource this so so again it might take you a really long time to do your invoicing but hiring it out to somebody who does this on a regular basis could be quicker and it can also create that separation for your clients around money so I have been working with a client for a while and I did invoicing for her and she told me that somebody hadn't paid and asked me to chase her payment so I sent an email obviously a really polite email asking for payment in this particular client got really annoyed that I had requested payment from her but instead of being angry at the therapist and risking that therapeutic relationship that they had built up she put her anger on me so in session she told the therapist I'm really angry that Kim reminded me about payment I was going to pay you that anger was transferred onto me instead of the therapist and then they can get on with the therapy session and kind of not have to deal with this issue if you have anxiety around chasing for payments and things like that it can be much easier to Outsource that to somebody else and get them to just Chase for the payments and manage this whole process okay they were 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're not alone like I said at the beginning of this video so many Therapies in private practice have this same issue and the majority of people that come to me this is why they have reached out to me they want help with invoicing and so that's why they've come to a virtual assistant and eventually the virtual assistant will take on more and more tasks I've worked with people that have been owed thousands and thousands of pounds and I've worked with people who had absolutely no idea who owed what so you are not alone if you are struggling with this if you would like to purchase the invoice template that I've created which also has an invoice log and a video tutorial I will leave that in the description below for you if you enjoyed this video the next video I would suggest watching is my finances for private practice so I will link that for you but for now thanks so much for watching thank you [Music]