First week of the month, again
The owner exports last month's appointments and payments, pastes them into the associate spreadsheet and starts adjusting. This patient bought a package in January, so the fee for today's visit has to be allocated from money received weeks ago. That one was insured and the insurer has not paid yet. There was a refund. Someone gave a family discount. One associate is on a different percentage for new patients than for returning ones.
By the time it is done, the associate has already asked twice when the statement is coming, and will probably query a line or two once it arrives.
The percentage is the easy part
Most associate agreements in chiropractic and osteopathy are a share of fees collected or fees generated, sometimes with a room or admin charge on top. The percentage itself is simple. The difficulty is the definition of the fee: when it counts, what is deducted, and how prepaid and insured work are treated. Those definitions live in the agreement, and the data needed to apply them lives in two or three different systems.
Without a system that knows the rules, the owner becomes the calculation engine every month.
The friction it creates
- Owner time spent on arithmetic at the start of every month.
- Late statements, which associates notice and resent.
- Disagreements over individual lines, because the associate cannot see the workings.
- Mistakes that repeat, because a rule was applied by memory rather than written down.
- Difficulty comparing associates fairly when their agreements differ.
What we build
- We sit down with your associate agreements and turn each one into written rules: the percentage, what counts as a fee, what is deducted, how packages, insured visits, discounts and refunds are treated.
- The system reads appointments and invoices from your clinic software and payments from Stripe, your card terminal reports or Xero.
- Each attended appointment is valued according to the associate's rules, including allocation of prepaid package money visit by visit.
- Insured visits are held until the insurer pays, if that is what the agreement says, and released on the next statement.
- A statement is produced per associate, per month, with every line traceable to an appointment and a payment.
- The owner reviews and approves; the associate receives a read-only link to their statement and can raise a query against a specific line.
- Approved totals can be exported for payment or for the associate's invoice to the clinic.
| Item | Typical treatment question | Where the answer comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Prepaid package visit | What value does this visit carry? | Your agreement, applied per visit |
| Insured visit | Counted when seen or when paid? | Your agreement |
| Family discount | Does the associate share the discount? | Your agreement |
| Refund | Clawed back in which month? | Your agreement |
We never decide those answers. If the agreement is silent on something, the system flags it for you to decide, and the decision is recorded as a rule for next time.
What month end looks like instead
There is a practical benefit when recruiting, too. A clear, automatic statement is something you can show a prospective associate, so they understand exactly how their earnings will be worked out before they sign. That transparency tends to prevent the disagreements that sour working relationships a year later.
The statement is ready when the month closes. The owner reviews it rather than builds it. Associates see the same numbers, with the workings, so queries are specific and rare. If an agreement changes, the rule changes on a date and every statement after that follows it. And the owner can finally compare associate performance on a like-for-like basis.
Could this be your clinic?
- Associate statements are built in a spreadsheet each month.
- Package and insured visits make the calculation slow.
- Associates regularly query their statements.
- Only the owner fully understands how the numbers are worked out.
- Different associates have different terms and it is getting hard to keep track.