Client records

Every business starts with a spreadsheet. It works until the day somebody sends you ten enquiries in one go, and then it is four spreadsheets with nothing in the middle of them.

A CRM is the unglamorous answer: contacts, where each one came from, and what happens next. The interesting part is that it is now a thing you can have built for your own practice rather than rented in a shape somebody else chose.

What comes out of a session

A psychologist arrived with hers already built, having asked her agent for it between sessions, and spent the time on the shape rather than the code: contacts that can be a lead or a client, where each one came from, clients shared with a co-therapist and clients who are hers alone, a next action with a date instead of a reminder system, and a two way calendar link so a booking made on her own site turns up in both places. By the end her real bookings were showing in her own CRM, behind a login that emails her a one time code.

What it costs

The hosting, and nothing recurring for the software. This is the category where the rented version is priced per user per month forever, for a shape that never quite matches how you actually work.

The measurement worth taking

Count how many separate places a client’s name currently lives: the calendar, the inbox, the spreadsheet, the invoice, the notes. That number is what this replaces, and it is the number that makes the case on its own.