About 90 therapists tried the free Practice Website Review in August, and some of you first found PracticeRunner that way.
I've continued improving it: reducing false alarms about broken links, correcting a scoring issue, and making the report less repetitive, with clearer next steps. If you used it earlier, you can run a fresh review.
Within PracticeRunner itself, one of August's updates began with an ordinary need in my own practice: I needed to send an appointment reminder directly to a minor client, after a parent gave consent, but PracticeRunner would not let me send the reminder.
PracticeRunner was cautious with child profiles, but treated access as all-or-nothing. Making this more flexible became part of a month shaped by my clinical days and conversations with therapists during onboarding: finding where work was awkward and reducing friction without losing important boundaries.
A clearer clinical day
Living in San Francisco, I really appreciate watching the fog gradually lift, revealing Twin Peaks, the blue sky, the ocean. I hope the new Today view does something similar for the clinical day, bringing appointments, unfinished notes, and prioritized follow-up into view. I had also found myself leaving Session Workspace to check an earlier note, so recent session notes now have an unobtrusive place in the workspace.
That reminder to a minor client was part of a bigger question: who needs to be involved, and in what way? A young person's portal access can now be managed separately from a parent or guardian's, so a reminder can reach them without automatically granting billing access. Appointments can identify which members of a couple or family are attending, while communication and financial responsibility stay connected to the case. A couple, family, or group remains one case across appointments. Read more about relationship cases.
The first inquiry doesn't always tell you what the work will become. Someone may get in touch individually and end up in a couple or family case. Prospect setup now lets you confirm that arrangement before clinical or billing history accumulates. You initiate the change; the software doesn't decide it for you. See how to set up the prospect case.
Making it easier to pay for therapy
The same attention to everyday friction led to payments. I use Apple Pay online, at the bakery and grocery store all the time, and it occurred to me that we could bring it into PracticeRunner too. Apple Pay and Google Pay are now available in the client portal for eligible devices and browsers. Clients and workshop attendees can also make one-off payments without storing a card.
Before the pandemic, I used to ask for payment at the beginning of each session. I've since moved to monthly billing, but many therapists still work that way. Pay by Phone gives them a simple handoff: open or create an invoice, show a QR code or send a secure link, and let the client pay privately on their own phone. No card-present equipment needed.
Practices can also reuse payment profiles with their preferred methods, discounts, and instructions instead of configuring them separately for each client.
A more complete clinical record
Alongside making the day easier to manage, I've been working on how the clinical record develops over time. Treatment plans now have a fuller workflow for creating, revising, activating, and reviewing a plan. Group practices can route a plan to a supervisor and return it for changes without a separate email thread. Plans can also be customized to each practice's needs.
Moving from SimplePractice with confidence
Onboarding another therapist helped me strengthen the SimplePractice importer's review process while keeping uncertain results visible for human review. Switching systems should not require blindly trusting that every relationship, appointment, document, and balance landed correctly.
Read what the importer can move or see the SimplePractice and PracticeRunner comparison.
Help shape what comes next
Using PracticeRunner in my own practice keeps showing me where it needs to improve. Helping other therapists get started shows me workflows I wouldn't encounter on my own.
Founding practices receive hands-on onboarding, direct access to me during setup, and an opportunity to inform what I build next. Under the current offer, AI note drafting is included at no additional charge, and associates can be added for $11 per month each. If you're curious, send me a note about how you work and what you'd like to make easier. We can talk through whether PracticeRunner is a good fit.