Nobody answers your phone, files your paperwork or chases your invoices, because there is nobody else. The work is fifty minutes at a time and everything around it happens in the gaps and on Sunday evenings. Picktime takes the finding-a-time, the confirming, the taking of money and the record-keeping off you, so the only thing left in the gap is the gap.
Blu TherapyBook online
First meeting20m · Online$45.00
Session50m · In the room$90.00
Assessment1h 30m · In the roomBook
Next free11:30 AM2:00 PM6:00 PM
Booked online
8:40 PM
Instead of three suggested times
Paid at booking
$90.00
Nothing to ask for at the end of the hour
Confirmation
Sent
Email, without you writing one
None of these is clinical work, and all four of them are currently happening in the evening.
“Does Tuesday at four work? No? What about Thursday?” is four emails before anything is agreed. One link shows what you genuinely have free and the client picks, once.
A confirmation when they book, and a reminder before the day on the paid plans, each carrying a link to move or cancel. A client who can move it at nine in the evening does, which is how you hear before the hour rather than after it.
Connect a payment provider and charge the full fee or a deposit when the session is booked, set differently for each appointment type. There is nothing to ask for at the end of an hour that should not end that way.
Raise an invoice from the booking itself, send it as a PDF, mark it paid or chase it. Where somebody claims on insurance or an employer pays, the paper already exists and already has the right date on it.
A practice of one usually has the contact in a phone, the history in a notebook and the dates in a calendar, and the only thing joining them is you remembering. In Picktime every session sits on that person’s own record with the answers they gave when they booked and anything you have added since, so opening one name gives you the whole history instead of three half-histories. It imports from wherever the list is now and exports whenever you want it back, so this is somewhere your practice lives rather than somewhere it gets stuck.
Half a caseload is on a screen now and the other half is in the room, and the difference should not be an extra job. Mark an appointment type as an online session and, on the paid plans, the Zoom, Google Meet or Teams link is created with the booking and sent in the same message the client already gets. Nothing pasted, nothing forgotten at ten to the hour. Where a client is in another time zone those plans show them their own local time, so nobody joins an hour late having done the arithmetic wrong.
Twenty to nine on a Sunday. The clinical work went well and none of what is on the table in front of you is clinical: three email threads about finding a time, two invoices that were never sent, and a client from Thursday who did not arrive and has not been in touch since.
This is not a busy week going wrong. It is what a practice of one looks like when every job that a front desk would do lands on the person doing the sessions. Picktime takes the four of them (agreeing a time, being paid, writing it down, and reminding on the paid plans) and does them while you are in the room with somebody.
A first meeting, a session, a longer assessment if you do them: each with its own length and its own fee, and each on the days you genuinely take clients. That is the whole of the setup.
Charge the fee, a deposit or nothing, per appointment type. Say how much notice you need and how late somebody may move their own session, so the policy is enforced without you restating it.
Put it in your email signature, on your directory profile and on your own site. The next person who asks whether you have anything gets the link rather than three suggested times.
There is no version of a solo practice in which you both hold a session and answer the phone, so every call arrives at the worst moment or at no moment at all. Picktime’s AI receptionist answers around the clock and handles more than one call at once, takes the caller through what they are asking for, captures their details and turns the call into a confirmed booking in your diary, checked against the same availability your booking link uses. Where somebody should be speaking to a person it transfers the call to you, and every call is transcribed into your dashboard, so an enquiry that came in at half past two is something you can read at seven instead of a number you do not recognise.
The free plan is a plan, not a trial. There is no end date and no card to add, and the paid plans are about how many of you there are.
Sessions land in the Google or Outlook calendar you already live in, and the paid plans sync them both ways, so there is never a second diary. An online session gets its Zoom, Meet or Teams link with the booking, and fees run through PayPal into your own account, or through Stripe or Square on a paid plan.
Picktime runs in a browser on a phone as well as a laptop, and there are iOS and Android apps, so the ten minutes between two clients is enough to see who is next, take a payment or send an invoice.
The one that removes the jobs a front desk would do, because you are the front desk. That means a link clients can book from, a confirmation that goes out without you, payment taken at booking and one record per client. Picktime does those four and is free to start. Reminders before the day sit on the paid plans, which are priced on how many of you there are. Massage therapist scheduling software has a fifth requirement, a treatment room held with the person rather than booked after them. That difference is why scheduling software for massage therapists gets its own massage therapy page.
No booking tool is compliant by itself. Compliance depends on what data is held, where it is held and what agreement covers it, which is an arrangement rather than a feature. Picktime holds your bookings and whatever your booking form asks for, and on the paid plans you choose what it asks for. If HIPAA applies to your practice, ask us what we hold before you set anything up rather than assuming an answer in either direction. Security and trust sets out how data is kept.
Picktime’s free plan covers a practice of one: your own booking page and link, appointment types with their own lengths and fees, and a record per client. No card and no end date, so nothing switches itself off after a fortnight.
Yes. Connect PayPal, or Stripe or Square on a paid plan, and charge the full fee, a percentage or a fixed deposit, set differently for each appointment type: a first meeting can be free where a session is paid for. The slot is confirmed once the payment has gone through.
Yes. Invoices are raised off the booking they belong to, sent as a PDF and marked paid, unpaid, overdue or refunded, so the paper for an employer or an insurer already exists and already carries the right dates.
Yes. In-person and online types sit in the same diary. On the paid plans, marking a type as an online session creates the Zoom, Meet or Teams link with the booking and sends it to the client, and clients in another time zone see their own local time on the booking page, so nobody joins an hour out.
Free, if the diary and the client records are all you need. That is Picktime’s free plan and it has no end date. Practices that also need clinical notes and insurance claims in the same tool are buying a practice-management system, which is a different and more expensive kind of product.
In private practice, yes, and it is most of the reason people go into it. What erodes the schedule is not the sessions but the negotiating around them: six emails to settle a Tuesday, then six more when somebody has to move it. Set your working hours once, decide how much notice a change needs, and let clients take a time from what is genuinely free, and the week stays yours without you defending it every Sunday.
Calendly has the most name recognition, and for a practice of one that is the wrong reason to choose it. It settles a time and stops there, so the payment, the invoice and the client’s history end up in three other places, which is the Sunday evening work you were trying to remove. The question worth asking is which tool keeps the session, the money and the record against one name.
We are not the right people to rank electronic health records, and the honest reason is that the figure you end up paying turns on claims, e-prescribing and how many clinicians sit on the licence rather than on the headline price. What is worth separating first is the diary from the record. An EHR is bought for clinical notes, treatment plans and insurance claims, and it is the expensive part of the stack; Picktime is not one and does not try to be. If the notes can stay in the EHR and the booking can live somewhere free, that split is usually where the bill actually comes down.
A standing hour An assessment first, then the same hour every week for as long as the work takes.
See psychologist scheduling
Rooms One-to-one appointments with a chosen therapist, and a room held with them.
See massage therapy scheduling
Across time zones Sessions booked across time zones, mostly over video, mostly by one person.
See coaching schedulingFree forever for a practice of one. No card, no trial clock, and a link that ends the back-and-forth from the next enquiry onward.
Google Calendar
Outlook Calendar
Zoom
Stripe
PayPal