Usually bundled: clinical notes, a client record, scheduling and a booking page, invoicing and payment, intake and consent forms, appointment reminders, and increasingly video sessions.

Usually not bundled: a phone number. No voicemail, no greeting, no way for a client to call you, and no two-way texting. This is the single most consistent gap in the category — the complaint appears in almost every public thread about setting up a solo practice, in the same words each time.

Bundled but not what you think: messaging. Records software generally offers one or both of two things. Portal messaging is secure and properly recorded, and requires the client to log into a portal or install the client-facing app. Appointment reminders by SMS go out as text messages but are usually one-way — the client gets them and cannot reply, or replies land nowhere useful.

If you have been assuming your records software covers client communication, that distinction is the whole answer. It covers documented communication with clients who will log in. It does not cover a stranger phoning you, and in most cases it does not cover a client texting you back.

How do I check what mine actually includes?

Go through the list below in your own account rather than on the pricing page. Pricing pages use the word "messaging" for three different things.

• Can a client reply to a message without logging in? If the answer is no, you do not have texting. You have a portal.

• Is there a phone number I can publish? Not a reminder sender ID — a number someone can dial.

• Is video included in my tier, or an add-on?

• Do intake and consent forms come with it, or am I paying a forms tool?

• Are reminders included, and are they counted or capped?

• Can I export everything if I leave, and in what format?

That last one is not a feature question. It is the one that determines how expensive changing your mind will be.

Why won't clients use the portal?

Because it is one more account, and because the moment you need them is the moment they are least willing to make one.

This is not a hypothetical objection — it is a repeated, specific complaint from practitioners who bought secure messaging and then could not get clients to use it. The phrasing that comes up is people asking whether there is any way to have secure text conversations with clients without requiring them to sign into an account. The honest answer is that most of the options marketed as secure in this category solve the problem by moving the conversation somewhere the client has to go, and a share of clients simply won't.

Adolescents are the sharpest version of this. Practitioners describe text as the only channel that works with some teen clients, which is exactly the case a portal cannot serve.

So what do I do about the phone gap?

Three options, and the right one depends on whether you need a number or you need something to answer.

A second line from your mobile carrier. If all you want is a work number to publish, and you plan to return calls yourself, this is the cheapest thing that works and it is not close. It bolts nothing onto your records software, but neither does anything else in this category.

A separate phone and texting service. More expensive, and where you get greetings, hours, transcription, automatic replies to missed calls, and two-way texting with clients who won't install anything.

Email and a booking link only. Publish no number. Real practitioners run this deliberately. It is free and it costs you the callers who would rather phone.

Whichever you pick, the calls and texts live outside your records software.

What about getting it into the chart?

This is the follow-on problem and it does not have a clean solution today.

Because the communication happens outside the records system, nothing lands in the file automatically. Practitioners describe wanting electronic communication records in the chart in a way that is not cumbersome, and mostly they are copying and pasting or summarising into a note. At least one widely used platform has no open interface for other tools to write into it at all, which forecloses the automated version entirely.

Decide your rule before you accumulate a year of messages: what gets documented, in what form, and when. A short standing practice — a note summarising between-session contact, written the same day — is far easier to sustain than a retrospective clean-up.

It helps to know exactly how much the Colleges are asking for, because it is less than the copy-and-paste habit assumes. Ontario's psychotherapy College describes the client-contact part of the record as "a notation of all in-session and out-of-session contacts with a client or their authorized representative", and names the examples: "letters, emails, texts, and telephone calls" (CRPO Professional Practice Standards). A notation. Not a transcript. The counselling therapy standards are worded more broadly — "text messages, e-mail messages and other text-based or video-based platforms are included in the record keeping process" (CCPA Standards of Practice).

Two cautions worth carrying. The psychotherapy College's contents list sits in commentary rather than in the numbered standard, so it describes an expectation rather than a rule with a clause number. And the social work College treats correspondence as something the record may include — but adds that once it is in, "these tools cannot be removed" and must be managed like everything else in the file (OCSWSSW, Interpretation 4.1.2). Pasting a whole thread in is a decision you cannot walk back.

There is a reason to be deliberate rather than exhaustive. The psychotherapy College's electronic practice guidance points out that "emails and recordings effectively serve as transcripts of the therapy" (CRPO Electronic Practice Guideline). A same-day note saying a call happened, what it was about and what you did is usually the better artefact, and it is the one you can actually sustain.

Am I better off with an all-in-one?

Sometimes, and the deciding factor is usually not features.

The case for consolidating is real: one login, one bill, one place a client is sent, and communication that at least has a chance of sitting near the record it belongs to. The case against is that all-in-one pricing is generally built for practices with staff, and a solo practitioner can end up funding a billing engine and a group-scheduling system to get a phone number.

The honest test is to list the eight jobs a practice has to cover, mark which ones you would genuinely use, and compare that against the tier you would have to buy. If more than a third of what you are paying for is for a practice larger than yours, two focused subscriptions will serve you better.

The short version

Assume your records software covers notes, scheduling, billing and forms, and assume it does not cover a phone. Check what its "messaging" means before you plan around it — a portal your clients won't sign into is not a communication channel. And whatever you use for calls and texts, decide up front how it reaches the chart, because nothing will do that for you.

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.

See what's included · Start the trial