External Credit Card Processing

While many of our customers prefer the advantage of using TherapyAppointment’s integrated credit card processing, we know it doesn’t work for everyone!

If your practice uses a non-integrated payment service you can still record the copay and session fees in TherapyAppointment and keep your clients’ accounting records accurate for statements and superbills.

Important Notes

Recording payments via this method does not charge a card within the system
That will need to be done with your external card processor in a separate outside step

privacy_tip PCI Compliance

This is an extremely important note: though it may be tempting for convenience, for your client's security and safety:

Please do not make a note of the client's card details on the alert or memo fields in the client profile
Client card details should also NOT be collected from custom online forms

If you use an external card processor, you should collect that information securely outside TherapyAppointment, and only enter and save those details within your card processor's secure portal or application to ensure PCI compliance. NEVER store card data in plaintext where it can be read in full in any application, including ours. This specifically goes against PCI compliance, and securely storing cardholder data.

With integrated card processors, we allow you to collect and store these details securely and safely within the take payment or add card methods in the system as either a client or staff member, since we never actually store that sensitive data (the integrated card processor does).

Enable External Card Processing

Required role: Owner or Manager

To enable, navigate to:

(top right menu)
Click Billing & Ins. (top tab)
Find the section Payment Processing (bottom)
Find the bottom option External Card Processing and click (far right):

You'll then see a green checkmark on the left indicating it's enabled:

Record the External Credit Card Payment

Required role: Owner, Manager, Therapist (financial role), Biller

When you swipe or chip a credit card through a system that does not integrate with TherapyAppointment, you also need to record the payment amount in TherapyAppointment in order to maintain accurate record keeping.

Typical Workflow:

Take the payment in your other card processor portal or application
(Optional) Copy the unique reference # for that transaction (to use in step 3)
Record the payment in our system using the steps below

From the:

Schedule → click the client’s appointment to open up the summary page
Dashboard → click on the client’s name to open up the appointment summary page
Today or Autopilot view → click on the client’s initials to open up the appointment summary page
Billing & Insurance dashboard → Click Take Payment → enter the client name and click search
Client Profile → click on Billing (top tab)

Then click either or (top right) and continue on for the remaining steps:

You'll then see this screen, with each number explained below:

Here:

Select radio_button_checked External Credit Card (top right)
Enter the payment amount (top center)
Enter the unique reference number (optional) generated by your card processor for the transaction

Under this, if you collected the payment on a different date you can change it here

Ensure the distributions are correct if applicable, click → then on the next screen

🎉 Success! Your payment has now been recorded in the system!

After this, the payment will:

description Be documented, showing up on the client's profile under the Billing tab
monitoring Show up on reports for collected payments
dashboard Be visible on the client portal (if enabled)
description Automatically generate a payment receipt clients can access (if enabled)