Work schedules define the start and end of a clinician's work day and provide an easy reference of each clinician's availability for schedulers. If a clinician does not have a work schedule set, TherapyNotes will allow an appointment to be created at any time without warning. Work schedules should be set for any user with a clinical role in TherapyNotes. If any user attempts to create an appointment for a clinician outside of that clinician's designated work schedule, a warning will appear to alert the user of a scheduling conflict.
While work schedules are not required to schedule appointments through TherapyNotes, they are required to allow clients to view a clinician's availability and request appointments on TherapyPortal, your custom client portal.
To Set Work Schedule Access
Click Settings > Security
- If you would like Clinicians to be able to edit their work schedule, select Clinicians can edit their own work schedules
- If you would like to remove the ability of Clinicians to set their own work schedules, select Only practice administrators and schedulers can edit work schedules. If you select this option, you’ll need to set a work schedule for each clinician in your practice.
Clinician Scheduling Settings
- Navigate to Staff > Staff Name > Work Schedule
- Click Edit on the right-hand side of your screen.
- Select what settings work best for you and your practice:
- Patients may use the portal for scheduling: Clinicians can allow patients to request appointments through TherapyPortal.
-
Accepting new patients: Clinicians can indicate whether they are accepting new patients. This is defaulted to Accepting.
- If a Clinician unchecks this box, their name will appear under a Not Accepting New Patients section when scheduling a therapy or psychiatry intake and be hidden in the list of available providers in TherapyPortal when a new client requests an appointment.
To Create a Work Schedule
- Navigate to Staff > Staff Name > Work Schedule tab
- Click + Add New Schedule
Customize Your Weekly Availability
- Schedule Name: By default, schedules are named Schedule 1, Schedule 2, etc. You can rename a schedule at any time. Feel free to use descriptive titles like Summer Fridays or Telehealth on Tuesdays to match your needs.
- Schedule Start and End Date: You can set different start and end dates for each schedule you create.
- Repeats: You can customize the repeat interval to occur weekly, every two weeks, every three weeks, or every four weeks.
- Total Hours: The total weekly hours for that work schedule are displayed at the top right corner of the schedule.
Availability:
- Day: You can set availability on a day-by-day basis. To get started, select the day from the left side of the work schedule.
- Time: Specify the start and end time for that specific availability block.
- Select your Mode: In Person or Telehealth, In Person, or Telehealth. For Practices using TherapyNotes Telehealth, clinicians can set one of three appointment mode preferences for each availability block: Telehealth Only, In-Person Only, and Both. When scheduling a new appointment, a banner will appear below the location field if it conflicts with the clinician's selected mode, helping prevent errors, such as booking an in-person session during a telehealth-only time block.
- Location: From the dropdown menu, select your location. If you or your practice have multiple locations, they will be available in the dropdown menu.
Additional Work Schedule Tools
- Remove a Scheduled Time: Click the X to the right of the corresponding availability.
- Add additional availability: Click the plus ( + ) button to add availability to that day.
- Copy Availability to Another Day: Click the Copy icon and select the day you want to copy on the dropdown menu.
Creating Multiple Schedules
You can create and manage multiple schedules with defined start and end dates. This makes it easier to manage varying availability, such as rotating shifts or seasonal hours, without constantly editing a single schedule.
To set up another work schedule, simply create another schedule in the Work Schedule tab by clicking Edit in your Work Schedule and clicking +Add New Schedule. Then, follow the same steps above to create another work schedule. Each new work schedule will be displayed as a list.
Once your schedules are saved, you are able to quickly see which schedules are currently active with the green check mark.
Deleting Schedules
To delete a work schedule, go to the Work Schedule tab and click Delete Schedule at the top right of the schedule. A confirmation dialog will appear. Click Delete Schedule again to confirm and permanently remove the work schedule.
Adjusted Availability
From the Work Schedule tab, you can set additional availability by clicking +Add Adjusted Availability to create the appointment type that suits your needs. If a clinician needs to make an exception to their regular schedule, you can add a Scheduled Event or mark them as Unavailable on both the clinician’s work schedule and from the Scheduling page. These entries prevent appointments from being booked during those times and block availability on TherapyPortal. Additionally, if you would like to add one-off scheduling availability, add an Extra Availability appointment to your calendar.
Clients can still request appointments through the client portal during practice-wide Scheduled Events. To learn more, read Schedule Non-Clinical Events.