A patient asks how many visits she has left
Reception opens the package spreadsheet, finds her row, and sees eight of twelve used. Her invoice history suggests seven. The diary shows nine attended, one of which was a missed appointment that may or may not have been charged against the package. Five minutes later there is an answer, with an apology attached.
Prepaid packages are popular with chiropractic and osteopathy patients because they spread cost and commit to a course of care. They are also one of the most common sources of end-of-month confusion in a clinic.
Why package balances drift
- The package is sold at the till or through an online payment, but redemptions are ticked off by hand in a separate sheet.
- Missed and late-cancelled visits are handled differently by different staff.
- Family packages shared between two or three people make one row serve several patients.
- A patient switches practitioner mid-package and the second clinician's visits are logged against the wrong item.
- Refunds or transfers are agreed verbally and never written down.
None of these is a staff failing. The clinic simply has two records of the same thing, and they are kept in step by memory.
The cost of getting it wrong
Unused balances sit on the books as money received for care not yet delivered, and nobody is sure of the total. Patients who are told the wrong balance lose trust quickly. The owner cannot tell whether a package offer is actually profitable, because the redemption data is unreliable. And the front desk spends time on arithmetic that software should be doing.
| Question | With a spreadsheet | With linked records |
|---|---|---|
| How many visits does this patient have left? | Look up, cross-check, hope | Shown on the booking screen |
| What do we owe in unused visits? | Estimated at year end | A live total, by package type |
| Was that no-show charged to the package? | Depends who was on reception | Follows your written policy every time |
| Which packages expire this month? | Nobody knows | A list with contact buttons |
What we put in place
- We read package sales from where they happen: your clinic software, Stripe, your card terminal's reports or Xero.
- Each package is recorded once, with its owner, any family members allowed to use it, the visit types it covers and any expiry date.
- Attended appointments in the diary draw down the matching package automatically, using the appointment type and patient.
- Your cancellation and missed-visit policy is written into the rules, so it is applied the same way each time.
- Anything the rules cannot decide, such as a visit type the package does not cover, lands in a review queue for a person.
- Balances appear where staff already look, and can be included in appointment confirmations if you want patients to see them.
- A monthly summary shows packages sold, visits redeemed, outstanding balances and packages near expiry.
If your clinic software already handles packages well and the problem is how it has been set up, we will say so and help you change the setup instead of building anything.
After the change
Expiry is the other quiet win. A package that lapses with visits unused is rarely what the patient wanted, and a reminder a few weeks before, in your wording, gives them the chance to book. Whether you extend, refund or let it expire stays your policy decision; the system just makes sure nobody is caught by surprise.
Reception answers balance questions from the screen in front of them. Month end stops involving a spreadsheet hunt. The owner can see which package sizes patients actually finish, which helps when deciding what to offer. Disputes become rare because every draw-down has a date, a visit and a rule behind it.
Does this sound like your clinic?
- There is a package spreadsheet that one person maintains.
- Balances are corrected by hand every month.
- Different staff treat missed visits differently.
- You do not know the total value of unused prepaid visits.
- Patients sometimes know their balance better than you do.