As more and more of us counsellors are seeing clients from home, either online, or in a hybrid of face to face and remote sessions, the necessity of keeping our counselling practices organised, streamlined and most importantly, secure, is ever more important.
There are clear financial and practical advantages to running your counselling business from home. Flexibility and avoiding room rental expense are real benefits to counselling from home.
However, the professionalism of your private therapy practice can be compromised by working from home, since the boundary between your professional and personal life will inevitably blur, especially when you are fielding a high volume of counselling client referrals and client contact throughout the day.
Mistakes such as double bookings, the frustration of missed referrals and the time consumed with rescheduling cancelled appointments and keeping on top of payments can start to weigh heavily on us.
Falling behind on the administration of our home counselling business runs the risk of both loss of income and compromising our professional reputation.
It's true that how we administer our private practice is just as important as our therapeutic skills in determining the success of our home counselling business.
When your counselling business runs smoothly and efficiently, looking and feeling professional to clients, your business is more likely to attract more counselling client referrals, and counselling clients are more likely to recommend your therapeutic services to others.
One way to ensure that your home counselling business is run smoothly and professionally is to use a practice management system.
The benefits of running your home counselling business using Practice Management Software are as follows:
1. Reduced admin
With practice management software for therapists the administrative load is vastly reduced.
The best practice management software for therapists will arrange client bookings, take payment, generate receipts and keep track of the client experience, outstanding invoices and counselling business finances.
2. Manage your counselling business remotely
Access your dashboard securely from anywhere in the World. All you need is an internet connection.
The best practice management software for therapists will notify you when you receive new bookings and when there are any changes to your diary.
It should also allow you to contact clients, issue appointment reminders and payment request links at the touch of a button.
3. Secure client data storage
Your practice management system should securely store all of your counselling business data in one place.
Allowing you to manage your diary, access counselling client contact details, attendance history and clinical notes, keep track of your income and outgoings, view outstanding invoices, and log your clinical hours, CPD and supervision attendance all from one central dashboard.
4. Minimise non-attendance and non-payment
The best practice management systems for therapists will automatically issue appointment reminders and payment request links to clients.
This way DNA’s are reduced and the cost of these and late cancellations is minimised by taking payment at the point of booking.
5. Streamlined billing
Payment can be the most stressful part of running your own counselling business from home. Using a practice management system will allow you to distance yourself from the awkwardness of requesting and chasing payments.
The best practice management software for therapists will allow you to easily generate and issue invoices and will automatically send payment reminder messages to clients on your behalf.
The billing software should also allow you to keep track of your income, your counselling business expenses and outstanding invoices, as well as readily generate financial reports for your accountant.