Overview

PowerDiary is great in lots of ways and their knowledgebase is extensive but it tells you all of the things that are possible, possible in physio or podiatry alongside psychology in Australia or the US. Through this generalisation it fails to solve the problem which is what am I meant to do when setting up PowerDiary for a psychology practice in Australia. This collection of article tries to bridge that gap and it also extends into the other questions we often see that are bigger than the software setup execution but go back upstream into the overall business design and strategy you might want to consider before locking in the execution.

Please bear with us while we try to build out the detail as there is a lot to cover and a lot to keep up to date. If you're interested in us opening up a community page to discuss these topics between similar professionals then please comment and if there's enough interest we will do so.

Steps:

1. Compare your opportunities. We hear from registrar perpetually things like this practice is offering supervision or this other practice is offering a higher percentage. You need to compare offerings on an equal financial basis and then knowing the likely annual income choose the non-financial factors such as travel time or cultural fit or career network advancement that makes sense to you.  
2. Know what business you are in and what your choices of legal structure are best aligned with where you see yourself in 5 years. Speak to a trusted accountant about setting up partnerships, JV's and companies. If your choosing to be self employed, then ABN's are simple to register online 
3. Figure out your branding - you'll need it on invoices and the portal. This will extend to website creation at some point. But remember that if you are moving into an area and introducing yourself to referrers then at a minimum you want your LinkedIn and website matching the promises you might make verbally. Also think about your email address and phone number as a long term asset once it starts being entered into your referrers list of good professionals. Getting a .com.au domain now and tying your email address to it at a minimum is a sensible step. NB: Stripe won't pay out your earnings until you have some form of website up and running so a simple Contact and About page is mandatory if you're planning on doing telehealth delivery.   
4. Figure out the peripheral systems - things like merchant providers, business phone, email and report transports - you'll need it as part of the setup. We recommend Stripe & Tyro, Zoom Meetings (Business), Zoom Phone, Office 365 and GoFax respectively.
5. If you haven't already, then sign up for a free PowerDiary trial. BUT, be aware that the first user to sign up will be the "Master User", so if you as reception to sign up they will forever see everything including all clinical notes. We suggest creating an "alias" email address against the practice owner called [e-mail] and using that as the sign up email, then you can create all the separate accounts with lower privilege. Also, if you use this link, then it includes a discount code that will also give you 500 free SMS credits worth $75 when you sign up. If you end up using us for Virtual Admin we will also offer VA discounts if you used our link for your signup.
6. Understand our design decisions by reading through the design articles at the top right in this section. If your pattern of work differs then our assumptions may not hold. For instance if you do medico legal reports where the identified patient is crystal clear then our choices around structuring treatments as a collection of different consumers within a family group may not hold. 
7. Start working through the core configuration pages of PowerDiary itself. PowerDiary's offer setup support via their portal using Zoom sessions. But also feel free to give us a call if you need a hand! You should be building relationships with referrers not wasting time on technology and compliance where possible.
   • Configuration
   • Calendars, Users and Rosters
   • Services, products and Session Packs
   • Custom Lists
   • Setup Medicare
   • Client Portal
   • Templates, Notes and Forms
     • Intake
8. Ask PowerDiary to import your current clients and possibly their appointment history - they will need a well formed Excel spreadsheet or export files from your old PMS to do so. You will still need to rekey things like GP mental health care plans though.  
9. Test everything! Set up a dummy email address and work through the client experience end to end. 

Last Updated: 28 Jan 2022