Help Topic: Clients
- I Can't Delete A Client User
- What Does Client Status Mean?
- Do I Need To Provide Login Information For Clients?
- Why Would I Want To Pre-assign Practitioners?
- How To Set A Client's Availability?
- Who Can See The Additional Information Notes?
- How Can I Change The Calendar Color?
- How Do I Add A Student?
- What Are Assigned Clients?
- A Note About Assigned Assigning Clients To Practitioners
- What Is A Welcome E-mail?
- What Is An Api?
- How Do I Assign A Client To A Practitioner?
- How Do I Set Custom Costs For Clients?
- Can Clients Cancel Sessions?
- How Do I Save A Customer Credit Card To Stripe?
- What Are Agents?
- Why Use Hide Costs?
Q. I Can't Delete A Client User
If you are unable to delete a client user it is because they are present within sessions or have sent service payments.
To protect your business data, you are not permitted to delete client users who have financial information linked to their account.
If you MUST delete the user, you can delete all their service payments, and remove all sessions from the calendar they are linked to.
Alternatively, you can mark the client user as inactive, or prospect. You do this from the edit menu, or the list pages.
Q. What Does Client Status Mean?
There are 3 types of client status, they are:
- Active: active clients are able to log in to their account if granted permission, be added to sessions, and make payments on their accounts. If a client is an active client, then they should have an active status
- Inactive: inactive clients can't log in to their account, make payments, or be added to sessions. Inactive status is for clients who are not presently using your services.
- Prospect: prospects are clients who have never used your services. They are usually new cleints.
You can use client status to track the client through your sales process. In addition, the sales manager section provides additional sales features for tracking and communicating with potential clients who are prospects.
Q. Do I Need To Provide Login Information For Clients?
No. Login information is not required. You do not have to provide a username or password for clients.
If you do provide a username and password for a client they will be able to login and access their information. Information they can access depends upon the permissions you set for them.
Typically, clients can:
- Update their availability
- See their upcoming sessions
- Review their service history
- Make payments on their account
- Complete requests you set for them
- Review any assessments or reports from practitioners
- Get contact information on their assigned practitioners
If you gave log in access to a client but want to take it away, delete the username and they will no longer be allowed to log in.
Q. Why Would I Want To Pre-assign Practitioners?
Practitioners are assigned to a clients when a session is created. This happens regardless of the pre-assigned practitioners selected in the client add or edit pages.
You may want to pre-assign a practitioner to a client in cases where there are no sessions between the client and practitioner on the calendar. This occurs when you have a new client.
There are times when you may want to assign a practitioner to a client so they can see the practitioner's information and potentially contact them before their first session. That is why this feature has been made available.
Q. How To Set A Client's Availability?
Administrators and staff can set a client's availability by doing the following:
- Go to the clients list page (CLIENTS > CLIENTS or by clicking on the client icon to the left of the screen)
- Click the EDIT icon for the client
- Click on the AVAILABILITY link to show the weekly schedule
- Provide the start and end times for each day the client is available
Leave days blank where the client is not available. If they were previously available on a day but are not available now, highlight the time with your cursor and delete the time.
Clients can log in to their account and adjust their availability in the following way:
- Click on their name at the top-right corner of the screen
- Select ACCOUNT
- Click on the AVAILABILITY Tab
- Edit their availability accordingly
The client's availability is used to pair clients and practitioners within the Scheduling tool. Furthermore, it provides administrators and staff a good indication of service coverage across the week.
Q. Who Can See The Additional Information Notes?
When you view or edit a client, there is a notes section. You can access the client notes within the edit page and clicking on the additional information link.
These notes are visible by admininstrators, staff and practitioners with the "see student information" permission.
Q. How Can I Change The Calendar Color?
You can change the calendar color of a client by doing the following:
- Go to the client list page (CLIENTS> CLIENTS)
- Click on the edit icon
- Click on ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
- Click on the color pallete to select a different color
This color will affect your view of the client only. It does not change the calendar color if the client were to log in to their account.
Q. How Do I Add A Student?
Students are considered to be clients.
To add a student:
- click on the CLIENTS menu option and select CLIENT
- now click the "Add Client" button
- If the student is a minor, add the students name to the first and last name fields but provide contact information and login information for the parent
- if the student is an adult, fill in the client information with their contact and login information
If you would like to store additional information about the client/student or parent, use the ADDITIONAL INFORMATION box to the left. The information you place in this section is viewable by administrators, and staff. Practitioner's can also see client notes if they are given permission to do so.
Q. What Are Assigned Clients?
Before you can add a session to the calendar, you must have assigned clients.
Clients are assigned to you in two ways:
- Pre-assigned by the administrator
- An administrator has created a session on the calendar where you are the practitioner
If you are unable to add a session to the calendar, one of the reason may be you have not been assigned to the client. Other reasons may be the client is not in active status or you do not have permission to add sessions.
In any event, contact your administrator if you expect to add sessions to the calendar.
Q. A Note About Assigned Assigning Clients To Practitioners
If you want to allow your practitioners to add sessions to the calendar you must do one of the following:
- create the 1st session on the calendar for them. Now the practitioner is associated with that client and they can add sessions with that client if they have permission to do so.
- go to the practitioners edit form and click on the assigned clients option (PRACTITIONERS > EDIT). Choose the client's name you want to associate with that practitioner.
Now, your practitioner will be able to add sessions with that client to the calendar.
Q. What Is A Welcome E-mail?
A welcome e-mail typically notifies the user they have an account within the software. It will display their username and password (upon account creation). You can customize this e-mail by going to SETTINGS > NOTIFICATION and editing the Welcome Message for the user.
A welcome e-mail can be sent upon account creation or from the user's view page.
A welcome e-mail is ONLY sent to those users who have a status of ACTIVE. If the user does not have a status of active, the welcome e-mail will not be sent. As a security precaution, only active users are allowed to login to their account.
If you wish to send a welcome message after the account creation, make sure to set the user's status to ACTIVE, then send the welcome e-mail.
Q. What Is An Api?
An API allows you to use your business data outside of the framework of this software.
For example, if you want to show your client testimonials, you can access the API from your site, get the information you need from this CRM, and display your client testimonials.
You need a trial account or enterprise account to access the API.
Q. How Do I Assign A Client To A Practitioner?
There are two ways to assign clients and tutors to each other.
Option 1:
- go to the clients list page
- select the client and hit the edit (pencil) icon
- choose the PRE-ASSIGN tab from the right most panel
- choose 1 or more practitioners on the list
- make sure the practitioner name moves from the left block to the right block
- click the submit button below
Option 2:
- go to the practitioners list page
- select the practitioner and hit the edit (pencil) icon
- choose the CLIENTS tab from the right most panel
- choose 1 or more clients on the list
- make sure the client name moves from the left block to the right block
- click the submit button below
Either of these procedures will associate clients and practitioners.
Typically, when an admin or staff user creates the first lesson between a practitioner and a client, they become assigned. However, in cases where there isn't a scheduled "first session," this is the process you would use to allow the practitioner to add a session to the calendar at a later date.
Q. How Do I Set Custom Costs For Clients?
The software uses the following hierarchy when determining the client cost upon session completion:
- Has the user enabled cost over ride? If yes, use those numbers to determine the cost
- Does the client have a unique rate associated with the service? If yes, use those numbers to determine the cost
- If the above were not satisfied, use the client cost associated with the service to determine the cost
You can set custom client rates here:
- click ACCOUNTING > BALANCES from the main menu
- click CUSTOM RATES from the sub-menu
- choose the client you want to set a custom rate for
- enter the UNIQUE RATE for the specific service
- click the green button with a checkmark to save
After you set a custom rate, the software will follow the hierarchy above to compute the client cost.
Q. Can Clients Cancel Sessions?
Yes. You can allow your clients to cancel sessions if you enable the setting and give the specific client permission to do so.
CLIENT CANCELLATIONS & POLICY
To allow your clients to cancel sessions you must enable client cancellations from Session Control AND give each client permission to Cancel Sessions. If you want all of your clients to have this permission use the Bulk Permissions Edit.
When a client is allowed to cancel a session they will see an orange icon on their dashboard under Upcoming Sessions, the session list tables, the calendar popup feature, and the session view page.
You are allowed to set your own cancellation policy based on default and custom session completion types. Up to 3 policy levels can be saved. For example, if you have a 24 hour cancellation policy, clients can cancel with no penalty 24 hours before a session. When a session is less than 24 hours in the future, the client will be charged according to the session completion type you set.
You can enable client cancellations and set your cancellation policy here:
- click on SETTINGS from the main menu
- click on SYSTEM from the submenu
- choose the SESSION CONTROL tab
- scroll down to STUDENT CANCELLATIONS & POLICY
The typical cancellation policy would have 24 in the Before in hours field and 'Missed - Full Costs and wages' for the session status field.
To use the bulk permissions tool go to:
- click on PERMISSIONS within Settings from the main menu
- click on the CLIENTS panel
- click on the BULK PERMISSIONS button
- select CLIENT CAN CANCEL SESSIONS
- choose your clients OR select all
- click on the checkbox
- click on SUBMIT BULK PERMISSIONS
- check the table below to ensure the permission was granted
Q. How Do I Save A Customer Credit Card To Stripe?
Saving Stripe information on your customers occurs in a couple ways:
- save a new customer card to Stripe
- save a customer ID to Bizstim that already exists in Stripe
OPTION 1: SAVE A NEW CUSTOMER CARD TO STRIPE
If you want to add a customer credit card that does not exist with stripe do the following:
- from the main menu click on ACCOUNTING
- from the main menu click on + Pay Assist
- click on the credit button within the Pay Assist table under the OPTIONS column for the client
- provide the customers credit card number, expiry date and CVC
- the card will be saved with Bizstim and Stripe
OPTION 2: SAVE A CUSTOMER ID TO BIZSTIM THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN STRIPE
- from the main menu click on ACCOUNTING
- from the main menu click on + Pay Assist
- click on the + button within the Pay Assist table under the OPTIONS column for the client
- provide the customer id you get from Stripe. It looks like this: cus_xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- select the credit card brand from the drop down list
- provide the last 4 digits of the credit card
- the card will be saved with Bizstim
That's it.
Q. What Are Agents?
The agent user class is a user that is assigned any number of clients.
Agents can audit the following client information:
- client details (CRM)
- session information
- reports
- records
- payments
- invoices
- balances
- make payments on behalf of clients
You may want to use the agent user class if you have 3rd party agencies that send you clients and would like to review your services and possibly pay you directly for those services.
If you use the Hide Costs client permission, you can conceivably hide the cost of services from your clients and allow the agent to receive bills/invoices and make payments for those clients.
Additionally, you can change the term "Agent" using our language translation feature. Other terms may be, but are not limited to:
- agency
- guardian
- trustee
- parent
- issuer
- payer
It's important to remember, the agent user class is not a replacement for the client user type. If you want to change client details, request sessions or cancel sessions you must still log in as the client. The agent user type is a tool for aggregating groups of clients, auditing client information and making payments.
Q. Why Use Hide Costs?
The HIDE COSTS permission for clients is used to prevent clients from seeing any costs related to your services.
You may want to use hide costs if you have 3rd party organizations sending clients to you and do not want their clients from seeing the true cost of your services.
The agent user class was created to handle scenarios like this. To get more information on "Agents," go to the Clients category of the helper tool and search for "What are agents?"