By
Adam Simmons
· Last checked
August 2026
Most likely not on the line you have now, and the honest answer is that this usually means changing products rather than changing a setting.
Practice lines aimed at solo practitioners are built around one person: one login, one device receiving the notifications, one inbox. There is often no concept of a second user at all, so there is nothing to grant access to. Adding an admin is not a permission — it is a different category of product.
That leaves three real options, and they cost different things:
A multi-user phone or messaging product. Built for more than one seat, with per-person logins and shared visibility. Usually priced per user, and usually a migration rather than an upgrade.
An answering service. A human answers, takes a message, passes it on. No change to your existing line beyond a forward.
Keeping the line yourself and delegating everything else. Your admin handles scheduling, billing, email and paperwork; the phone stays with you. This is what a lot of small practices actually do, and it is often the right answer.
Before choosing, be precise about what you are actually trying to hand over. "Answer the phone" and "handle scheduling" sound like the same job and are not.
Most likely not on the line you have now, and the honest answer is that this usually means changing products rather than changing a setting.
Practice lines aimed at solo practitioners are built around one person: one login, one device receiving the notifications, one inbox. There is often no concept of a second user at all, so there is nothing to grant access to. Adding an admin is not a permission — it is a different category of product.
That leaves three real options, and they cost different things:
A multi-user phone or messaging product. Built for more than one seat, with per-person logins and shared visibility. Usually priced per user, and usually a migration rather than an upgrade.
An answering service. A human answers, takes a message, passes it on. No change to your existing line beyond a forward.
Keeping the line yourself and delegating everything else. Your admin handles scheduling, billing, email and paperwork; the phone stays with you. This is what a lot of small practices actually do, and it is often the right answer.
Before choosing, be precise about what you are actually trying to hand over. "Answer the phone" and "handle scheduling" sound like the same job and are not.
What are you actually delegating?
Three different asks hide under this question, and they have different answers.
Answering live calls. Someone picks up when you are in session. This needs a person available in real time — either a staffed answering service or an employee whose job includes sitting near a phone.
Handling messages and voicemail. Someone reads what came in, replies to the routine parts, and flags the rest for you. This is what most practitioners actually want, and it is the one that genuinely requires shared access to the line.
Booking. Someone manages the calendar. This often needs no phone access at all — it needs access to the schedule, and a way for you to pass along the booking requests you receive.
If the third one is the real need, you can usually solve it without touching the phone line, and that is by far the cheapest path.
Why you can't just share your login
You can. It is a bad idea, and specifically it is bad in ways that matter more in this profession than in most.
There is no record of who did what. If everything happens under one account, nothing distinguishes your reply from your assistant's. In a practice where communications may form part of a clinical record, that ambiguity is a genuine problem rather than a tidiness one.
You cannot limit what they see. A single login sees everything, including clinical content that an administrative role has no reason to read.
You cannot revoke it cleanly. When the arrangement ends, the only remedy is a password change, and any device still signed in may not be affected by it.
It may cut against what your College expects of you. The duty lands on you rather than on the assistant: registrants "relying on others to provide reception or other administrative support train and supervise them on matters of confidentiality and privacy" (CRPO 3.1.3). The requirements the social work College sets for an electronic system holding records point the same way — it must "require a private access code or password" and "maintain an audit trail" that "records the date and time of each entry of information for each client" and "indicates any changes to the recorded information" (OCSWSSW 4.2.7). A shared login fails both halves of that. And where someone is acting for you, the psychology and behaviour analysis College's framing is that the custodian "remains responsible for information collection, use, disclosure, and secure destruction by the agent" (CPBAO 9.5).
Separate logins are the minimum bar, not a nice-to-have. A product that cannot offer them is a product that cannot do this job.
What to look for in something that can
If you are going to move to a multi-user setup, these are the things that actually matter day to day:
Separate logins per person, with a visible record of who sent what
Roles — the ability to give an administrative person access to scheduling and general inquiries without clinical content
Shared visibility on inbound messages, so nothing is answered twice or answered by nobody
Assignment, so a message can be handed to a named person rather than sitting in a common pile
Coverage settings, so calls go somewhere sensible when the admin is off
Removal — how fast and how completely access ends when someone leaves
Ask about the last one before you sign up. It is the question vendors answer least clearly and the one you will need in a hurry.
Is an answering service the simpler answer?
Sometimes, and it deserves a fair hearing because it requires no migration at all.
The objection practitioners raise is rarely about capability. It is about trust and about incentives — one put it bluntly: they did not trust anyone else to handle interactions with clients and prospective clients, and noted that an answering service gets paid whether or not the person ever books. Others describe the experience in shorter words than that.
The cost is also real; practitioners describe answering services and virtual assistants in the hundreds of dollars a month, which is a different order of spending than a phone line.
So: worth considering if what you need is a live human voice at the moment of the call. Less compelling if what you need is someone to work through messages, which is cheaper to solve with software.
Where a solo practice line falls short
Worth stating plainly rather than leaving to be discovered.
Rivet does not do this. It is a single-practitioner line — one login, one inbox, no second seat, no admin routing, no shared visibility. If the thing you need is someone other than you handling the practice line, Rivet is not the tool for it, and there is no setting that changes that. A multi-user product or an answering service is the right shape of answer.
The short version
Work out whether you need live answering, message handling, or just booking — they have different answers, and only the middle one really requires shared access to the line. Never share a login; separate accounts with a record of who replied is the minimum. And if your current line is built for one person, expect to move rather than to upgrade.
About Rivet
Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.
One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.