To provide patient's with flexible options and streamline your practice’s payment process, you can make payment requests optional for your online-booked, in-person appointment types - for appointments where payments aren’t enabled.
This allows you to seamlessly collect payments through HotDoc for more appointment types with confidence, reducing front desk queues and giving your reception staff greater visibility into patient payment preferences.
Please see the guide below for how this works.
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Please note: This feature is in trials and is not available to all customers. |
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In this article |
How does Optional Payment Requests work?
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Patients can optionally add a payment method for your online booked in person appointment types at your practice that don’t have payment settings enabled -This excludes your Telehealth appointment types.
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When a patient opts in and payment method, we will write this back to the patients appointment to indicate that payments via HotDoc is preferred for the patient
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You will see a ‘Online preferred’ status in the Sidebar [In trials],
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You will see a ‘Pay via HotDoc preferred’ note in their appointment in your book,
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You will see a ‘HD$’ note in their appointment in your book.
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You can add a website link with your practice fees if you have this available, which will be shown to the patient in the patient journey so they can understand the estimated costs.
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Once the patient has finished their visit, you can charge the patient the final amount on their invoice.
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If the patient does not attend their appointment, you can collect a no-show fee.
Please see the sections below for how to set up, what this looks like for the patient when booking as well as your reception team.
How to set up Optional Payment Requests in your Dashboard
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Go to Payments > Payments Setup > Account Settings tab:
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Scroll to “Patient Opt in for payments” and check the box:
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You can insert a link to your practice fees in the “Website of your fees” section, if this is available on your website. This will be shown to the patient when booking.
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Click the green Save button
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Patient Journey - What does it look like for the patient?
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When a patient is booking online and they book for an appointment that does not have payments enabled, they will see the option to add a payment method for their booking. They will also see a link to your website practice fees if you linked this in your Dashboard settings.
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The patient will then select their existing stored card, add a new payment method, or choose to ‘pay manually at reception’:
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The patient will proceed to book their appointment, and in their Appointment History in their HotDoc account, they will see that their selected payment method will be charged via HotDoc after the consult "Automatic pay after consult"
Reception Journey - How it appears in your Dashboard/Sidebar, and how to collect payment.
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Once patients optionally add their payment method, this will appear in your appointment book, Sidebar, and Dashboard like so:
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Appointment book - With a note “Pay via HotDoc preferred” and “HD$” at the beginning of the appointment tile so that you know the patient prefers to pay via HotDoc.
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In the Sidebar (in trials): In the “Payments to action” tab, you will see the patient’s appointment with an “Online preferred” status:
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In Best Practice:
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In Pracsoft:
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In the Dashboard: In the “Payments > Booking Activity> All ” section, you will see the patient’s appointment details, and the Estimated cost column will indicate “$1”. This is so that you can charge the patient the final amount once they’ve completed their appointment and all item numbers have been added.
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Once the patient’s appointment time has passed or they’re status is in billing, you can collect payment for their appointment.
- If collecting in the Sidebar [In trials], please see: How to collect payments in the HotDoc Sidebar (trial)
- If collecting in the Dashboard, please see: How to collect a payment for a patient's appointment (Dashboard)