Help / Settings

The free consultation limit

Booking a patient on the schedule on Start, from a lead, or by the patient in their portal; Settings, Fees and quotes, Free consultations.

A patient is offered a free consultation once in the organisation's own period, six months unless it has been changed. Booking one for a patient who has had one inside that period, or who already has one booked, is refused. The message says when the earlier one was, and Book as paid books the same time as a paid consultation instead.

On the schedule this applies when the purpose you type is a free consultation. From a lead it applies when you press Same person against somebody already on file and the enquirer is holding a time: the time they chose is a free consultation, so it is checked before anything is written. A new patient has no earlier appointments and is never refused.

In the patient portal it applies when what the patient writes about the appointment reads as a free consultation: the time is not reserved, and they are told when they last had one and asked to message the practice to book a paid consultation instead.

A free consultation that was cancelled, or that the patient did not attend, does not count against them.

What counts as a free consultation is what was typed as the appointment's purpose. The words looked for, the period, and what free and paid consultations are booked as are set under Settings. An appointment typed in other words is not counted.