Understand Jane’s bookings, returning clients and payments

Start with Jane’s built-in reports

Jane has built-in reports for appointments, money owed, payments, referrals and returning clients, as well as an overview for each practitioner. Start with these when you need to understand a change in the practice.

Before comparing results, check three things: which appointment hours are being counted, which clients or visits are included, and which date is used for money. A difference in any of these can explain why two reports disagree. The examples below use invented numbers to show how the calculations work.

Check what Jane counts as booked time

Jane’s Hours Scheduled / Booked report divides booked hours by shift hours. Booked time uses scheduled appointment length, and appointments still on the schedule can count even when marked no-show. Breaks are reported separately.

Suppose a clinician has 30 shift hours and 24 booked appointment hours, including two hours of missed appointments. Jane’s booked figure is 24 ÷ 30 = 80%. If the other 22 hours were attended, the share of shift time spent in completed appointments is 22 ÷ 30, or about 73.3%. One number describes bookings; the other describes care that happened.

Now suppose four of the 30 shift hours are reserved for supervision and notes. That leaves 26 hours the practice intended to fill with clients. Comparing appointments with those 26 hours is another useful calculation, but it should have a clear label, such as “share of available clinical time filled.” Do not change the calculation and leave the reader thinking it is Jane’s original percentage.

When a clinician appears unusually full, check shift setup and appointments outside shifts before concluding that the workload is sustainable. When a clinician appears underbooked, check whether the shift includes work the practice never intended to sell as appointments.

Separate returning visits from new clients coming back

Jane’s Patient Retention Report uses arrived appointments. Its returning-visit percentage is calculated from total visits minus new patients, divided by total visits. New and returning patient counts represent unique people for the selected period.

An illustrative month with 100 visits and 20 new clients has a returning-visit share of (100 − 20) ÷ 100 = 80%. That does not show how many of those 20 new clients returned. Many of the remaining visits could belong to established clients who started earlier.

To see whether new clients come back, follow the same people from their first completed appointment for a set amount of time. Keep planned brief care, changes of clinician and completed treatment visible. Our client-return guide shows an example. A return percentage alone cannot tell you whether the care was good or whether someone needed another appointment.

Check which payment date a report uses

Payments can belong to different dates. Jane distinguishes when the service happened, when the bill was issued, when money arrived and when that money was matched to a bill. Its reports call these purchase, invoice, received-at and applied dates.

Imagine a session on September 28, an invoice issued September 30, and a payment received October 4 and applied October 5. A September activity review and an October cash review can both be correct. If you force them to match by moving values between spreadsheet tabs, you lose the explanation.

For clinician pay, follow the approved agreement. Money received, money matched to a bill and an amount billed may fall in different pay periods. Check that the chosen report follows the agreement before using its total to calculate pay.

Use the numbers to choose the next action

Keep the built-in report and the management definition side by side. If a number is adjusted for a business question, record the calculation. This lets the next person reproduce the review and prevents an unexplained “corrected” number from becoming the practice’s unofficial truth.

When Cortexa can help with your review

Cortexa Analytics helps owners review weekly sessions, revenue, active and returning clients, clinician activity and filled or open appointment time. Compare it with the work you currently do to bring those answers together before deciding to hire or grow.

Jane already has useful reporting; additional software should earn its place by making your review easier to run. For a Jane practice, compatibility, the way your records connect to the reports and the available history are established before a Cortexa implementation. Native Jane reports remain useful for investigating their underlying records.

If the larger problem is that the owner must also run intake, billing and the front office, Full Service Partner is a separate service relationship with analytics included. The practice retains its clinical decisions and brand; the service agreement defines which administrative responsibilities Cortexa takes on.