Frequently asked questions

Atlacare is patient management software for allied health clinics in the UK. It brings scheduling, patient records, clinical notes, invoicing, online booking and a patient portal into one secure place, built for UK GDPR, and you can download your data any time.

Atlacare is built for solo practitioners and small to mid-sized clinics rather than hospitals. It suits anyone running their own diary, notes and billing, from a single physiotherapist through to a practice with 20 practitioners across several sites.

Atlacare supports 17 allied health professions, including physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic, podiatry, psychology, counselling, dietetics, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, sports therapy and acupuncture. Each profession gets the note format and clinical tools that suit how it actually works.

Not for the moment. Atlacare is available for UK practices only. Pricing is in pounds, and the platform and its guidance are built around UK GDPR, the ICO and UK regulators such as the HCPC, including consent tracking and UK record-retention rules.

You can be up and running on Atlacare the same day. A guided setup wizard takes you through your services, team, opening hours and locations, and Atlacare's import tool brings your patients across. Practices moving from another system use the same guided, self-serve import.

Yes. Atlacare has built-in import presets for Cliniko, Jane App, WriteUpp, Carepatron and Pabau, and it also accepts any CSV file. The importer maps your columns for you and matches your practitioners automatically.

Your patient details come across with Atlacare's import. From Cliniko, paid plans can also import appointment history, treatment notes and attachments; from other systems, clinical notes and appointment history are not imported, so keep a full export from your old provider. The account owner can export all your clinic's data (patients, appointments, clinical notes, invoices, payments and forms) as a ZIP at any time, on every plan, as well as the patient list or any one patient's record. Your data stays yours and there is no lock-in if you later decide to leave Atlacare.

No. Atlacare's free plan needs no card at all. You only enter payment details if you choose to upgrade to a paid Atlacare plan.

No. Atlacare runs in your browser, so there is nothing to install, update or back up yourself. It works on a computer, tablet or phone.

Atlacare has a free plan for up to 20 active patients. Paid plans are Solo at £25 a month, Clinic at £49 a month and Practice at £119 a month, with 2 months free if you pay for a year up front. Practices with 21 or more practitioners are covered by a custom Enterprise plan.

Yes. Atlacare's free plan covers one practitioner and up to 20 active patients, with no card and no time limit. The free plan includes your calendar, patient records, clinical notes, email reminders, invoicing and a simple online booking page with Atlacare branding. Booking confirmations, appointment reminders and sign-in emails go out as normal. Intake and consent forms, the patient portal, campaigns and automated emails or texts that you write yourself come with Atlacare's paid plans.

No, and that is deliberate. Where many competitors push you onto a countdown trial meant to force you into their system, Atlacare does the opposite: you get a genuinely free plan you can stay on for as long as you like, so you can take your time and review at your own pace.

Yes. Monthly plans stop at the end of the current billing month, and annual plans run to the end of the paid term (you can choose to close earlier). There's no cancellation fee and no lock-in. When a paid plan ends, your account moves back to the Free plan rather than closing, and nothing is deleted. You can export your data at any time, and we only delete your account and data if you ask us to. Your practice stays the controller of its patient records, so you keep them under your own retention obligations.

You keep full access to everything already in your account: all patient records, notes and files stay visible and editable. You just can't add new patients, practitioners or files until you upgrade or reduce your usage.

Atlacare's Clinic plan includes 3 practitioners and you can add up to 6, at £12 per extra seat a month. The Practice plan includes 8 and you can add up to 20, at £9 per extra seat a month. Practices needing 21 or more are covered by Atlacare's custom Enterprise plan.

Atlacare's Clinic plan includes 150 text messages a month and the Practice plan 300. Beyond that, and on the Solo plan, texts are pay-as-you-go at 5p each, billed monthly on its own invoice. Storage is 1 GB on the free plan (a hard cap), then 10 GB on Solo, 50 GB on Clinic and 200 GB on Practice; on a paid plan, extra storage is charged at £0.30 per GB a month. Video consultations include 5 hours of call time a month on Solo, 15 on Clinic and 40 on Practice, then 2p a minute. Going over doesn't stop you on a paid plan: storage is never blocked, and texts keep sending up to your monthly limit (500 texts beyond your bundle by default, which you can change in Settings then Text messages). If you reach it, texts pause until the 1st and emails still go out. Bundles reset on the first of each month. The free plan does not send text messages.

Yes. Health data is treated as special category data under UK GDPR and is encrypted in transit and at rest. The database is backed up every night. Access is role-based, with three levels of note visibility so confidential notes stay with the treating practitioner and the practice owner. You can turn on two-factor authentication, every significant action is written to an audit log, and analytics never run on clinical screens. You can export your data at any time, and erase a patient record once its legal retention period has passed.

With established cloud providers in the EU: the database runs in Railway's EU West region and files are kept in Cloudflare's EU region, both encrypted. The database is backed up every night; uploaded files are not part of that backup. Remote access is limited to support, security or incident response, with safeguards in place. Each provider and where it operates is listed on the sub-processors page.

Atlacare is built for UK GDPR from the ground up. Health data is treated as special category data, with consent tracking, UK record-retention rules, full audit logging, data export and right-to-erasure tools included as standard.

The clinic is the data controller for its patient records, and Atlacare acts as the data processor on the clinic's behalf under a Data Processing Agreement. Atlacare never uses patient clinical data for its own purposes.

No. Atlacare never uses patient data to train AI models, and patient health data is never sold or shared for advertising.

In Atlacare, access to clinical notes is controlled note by note. Each note is marked patient-visible, internal to staff, or confidential to the treating practitioner and the practice owner. The Atlacare patient portal only ever shows notes marked patient-visible.

Nothing is deleted when you cancel. A paid plan that ends drops your account to the Free plan, and your records stay where they are. You can export your data at any time, and if you want your account and data deleted, email [email protected] and we will do it. Your practice remains the legal controller of its patient records, so you're responsible for retaining them under your professional obligations.

Atlacare supports SOAP, DAP, BIRP and ADIME notes, chosen per practitioner and profession. Depending on your discipline you also get body charts, pain scores and outcome measures that score themselves (ODI, NDI, PSFS and DASH).

Yes, on every plan. The free plan includes a simple online booking page with Atlacare branding. Paid plans, from Solo up, add your own branding, intake and consent forms sent automatically to new patients, and the patient portal. You get a bookable clinic page and automatic reminders, with no web designer needed. On Clinic and Practice you can also embed booking on your own website, as an inline panel or a "Book now" button.

You can create and send invoices in Atlacare, and on the Clinic plan and above track insurance authorisations alongside them. Collecting card payments from patients through Atlacare is not available yet; you record payments as they come in.

Yes, on every paid plan. Atlacare has 1:1 video calls built in: they open full screen in the browser, with no app to install, and are never recorded. Rooms are private, so you admit the patient from a waiting room, and calls run on UK servers in London. Patients join from a secure email link with no login, after a one-time telehealth consent. Plans include 5 hours of call time a month on Solo, 15 on Clinic and 40 on Practice, then 2p a minute. The free plan does not include video.

Clinic Health is an Atlacare feature that scores your practice out of 100 across seven areas, including retention, revenue, diary use, attendance and note completion. Rather than only reporting what happened, Clinic Health suggests the next thing worth fixing.

No. The Atlacare patient portal opens in any browser through a secure link, so there is nothing for patients to download and no password for them to remember.

Yes. Patients can book through your Atlacare clinic page. The link in their reminder messages lets them manage the booking, and you choose what it allows: cancel, cancel and pick a new time, only send you a change request, or nothing. If you turn on online rescheduling, patients can also move an appointment to another free time themselves, from the portal or that link, within the notice and limits you set. Otherwise, in the patient portal they can cancel if you allow it, and message you to move an appointment. Atlacare sends reminders automatically, which helps cut no-shows.

In Atlacare, patients see only the notes you choose to share. Every note is marked patient-visible, internal or confidential, and the patient portal shows only those marked patient-visible. Patients can also see their invoices and treatment plan.

Open Settings and work through the Setup checklist in Atlacare. It walks you through your clinic details, locations, services and working hours, and remembers where you left off. Your services and hours feed both the calendar and your public booking page, so they are worth getting right early.

In Atlacare, go to Settings then Branding to upload your logo and set your brand colour. On paid plans they appear on your booking page, and on the emails Atlacare sends, so they look like they came from your clinic. Paid plans can also remove Atlacare branding.

Open the patient's profile in Atlacare, choose Edit patient from the ⋯ menu, switch on portal access and set their portal email. Then choose Copy portal link from the same menu and send it to them; the link works for 24 hours. The patient portal is available on paid plans. Patients sign in by magic link with no password to remember.

In Atlacare, click a slot on the calendar or use the + New button, and the booking opens in a side panel. Open an existing appointment to reschedule or cancel it. When you cancel, Atlacare asks you to confirm and offers a Let the patient know option, and the change is written to the audit log.

Open the appointment in Atlacare and choose Mark attended once the session has happened, or No-show if the patient did not turn up. No-shows feed the Attendance measure in Clinic Health so you can see the pattern over time.

In Atlacare, go to Settings then Hours & closures to set your clinic's opening hours and mark closures such as bank holidays. Each practitioner sets their own working hours within those times under Settings then Team. Hours control which slots appear on the calendar and on your public booking page.

Yes, on paid plans, under Settings then Calendar sync. Each practitioner can subscribe to their diary in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or another calendar app with the private iCal link on that page, a read-only, one-way feed. Two-way Google Calendar sync, where busy times from Google show in the Atlacare diary, is coming soon, as is connecting Outlook.

Yes. In Atlacare each practitioner has their own colour, so appointments are colour-coded by practitioner on the calendar. This makes a multi-practitioner diary easy to read at a glance.

In Atlacare, go to Patients then Add patient to create a record, or import a whole list under Settings then Data. The free plan holds up to 20 patients, and paid plans are unlimited.

Open the patient's profile in Atlacare and upload the file to their record. Files are stored encrypted and served only through short-lived secure links. Every plan includes storage: 1 GB on the free plan (uploads stop at the cap), 10 GB on Solo, 50 GB on Clinic and 200 GB on Practice. Paid plans are never blocked; storage beyond the included amount is billed at £0.30 per GB a month.

Yes. Atlacare has a safeguarding flag that marks a patient's record and keeps the related notes confidential to the treating practitioner and the practice owner. You can also add tags to a patient to surface anything your team needs to see at a glance.

In Atlacare you archive a patient from the ⋯ menu on their profile, which removes them from your active patient list while keeping their records for as long as your retention rules require. Nothing is deleted when you archive.

As the data controller you handle subject access requests, and Atlacare gives you the tools to do it. Open the patient's profile and choose SAR export from the ⋯ menu to download everything Atlacare holds on that patient. Every export is written to an audit log. Patients ask their clinic for this, never Atlacare.

Open the appointment in Atlacare and write your note in the editor. The editor uses the note format your profession expects, whether that is SOAP, DAP, BIRP or ADIME, rather than forcing one layout on everyone.

Yes, depending on your profession. Atlacare includes an anatomical body chart you can mark up with pain, tenderness, numbness and referred pain, plus a 0 to 10 pain score, so you can track how symptoms change between sessions.

Not yet. Atlacare gives each profession a ready-made note format, such as SOAP, DAP or BIRP, and loads the right one from the practitioner's profession automatically. You can preview each format under Settings then Note templates.

Yes. In Atlacare a clinical note locks and is versioned once signed, so there is a clear, tamper-evident record. This means your notes stand up if you are ever asked to produce them.

In Atlacare, go to Settings then Team to invite a colleague and choose their role. How many practitioners you can add depends on your plan: Clinic includes 3 and allows up to 6, and Practice includes 8 and allows up to 20.

Atlacare has four roles. Owners can do everything including billing. Managers can do everything except manage billing. Practitioners work with their patients, appointments and notes. Receptionists handle scheduling, patients and invoices but not clinical notes.

Yes, through roles and note visibility. In Atlacare a confidential note is visible only to the treating practitioner and the practice owner, and a receptionist has no access to clinical notes at all. Billing is limited to owners, so you control who sees what by choosing the right role.

Atlacare sends a confirmation when an appointment is booked and a reminder 24 hours before, automatically. Email reminders are included on every plan, and SMS reminders are available on paid plans. You can automate more of this with Atla Flow.

Check a few things in Atlacare. For texts, make sure text messages are switched on under Settings then Text messages, you have not reached your monthly text limit, and the patient has a valid mobile number. For email, ask the patient to check their spam folder and confirm you have set a reply-to address under Settings then Branding. Also check the patient has not opted out of that message type.

In Atlacare, open the Recalls page or a patient's profile and set a recall with a due date and reason, for example a six-month review. Recalls help you bring patients back before they lapse, which supports the Retention measure in Clinic Health.

Transactional messages such as confirmations, reminders and invoices are part of the service, so they don't need marketing consent (clinics can still switch reminders off in Campaigns). Marketing messages such as campaigns are only sent to patients who have given marketing consent, and they always include an unsubscribe link. Atlacare enforces this split automatically.

Every text to patients shows Atlacare as the sender, for every clinic and every plan, and the clinic's name is always in the message itself. One trusted sender name that patients learn to recognise makes fake texts easier to spot, which protects patients. Clinics can't set a custom sender name.

When a clinic moves to a paid plan, the Atlacare team does a quick check that it is a real practice, usually within one working day. We look at the practice address, the clinic's website or Google profile, and a professional registration number such as HCPC, GOsC or GCC. Appointment confirmations and reminders work from day one; campaigns and the clinic's own automated messages start once it is verified. For the first 30 days after that, those clinic-written emails are limited to 30 a day. The check protects patients from fake messages and keeps Atlacare emails landing in inboxes rather than spam.

In Atlacare, go to Settings then Public page and enable your booking page. Patients can then choose a service, pick a slot, enter their details and get a confirmation, with no work from you. The booking page is included on every plan, with Atlacare branding on the free plan. On paid plans you can also send new patients an intake form automatically when they book.

Yes. Atlacare gives you a link to your public booking page that you can share directly or add to your website, for example as a Book now button. Online booking is included on every plan. The free plan shows a Powered by Atlacare badge; paid plans can remove it.

Not yet. Taking card payments from patients through Atlacare, including deposits at booking, is not available yet. You can invoice the patient after the appointment and record the payment when it arrives.

In Atlacare, go to Invoices then create an invoice, add the billable items and email it to the patient. Amounts are always in pounds sterling. Patients pay you directly, and you record the payment in Atlacare when it arrives.

Not as a step of its own yet. Make the refund outside Atlacare, the same way the patient paid, and keep a note of it on the patient's record. An invoice that has not been paid can be cancelled from the invoice page.

Yes, on the Clinic plan and above. You can record an insurance authorisation against a patient, including the insurer, the authorisation number and the number of sessions authorised, and you update the sessions used as the course goes on, so you can see at a glance when it is running out.

In Atlacare you can record the patient's GP and their referral source on their profile, and attach the referral letter as a file on their record so it stays with their notes.

Not yet. Creating packages of sessions is not available in Atlacare today. You can raise an invoice for a block of sessions and note the arrangement on the patient's record.

Atlacare includes appointment and patient reports on paid plans, and revenue reporting on Clinic and above. Alongside these, Clinic Health turns the numbers into a single score with suggested actions.

The Atlacare patients list shows each patient's next appointment, so anyone with no upcoming booking stands out, and the home screen flags patients who are due for a follow-up. Set a recall so you follow up before they drift away. This directly supports the Retention measure in Clinic Health.

In Atlacare, the reports available on Clinic plans and above show your revenue and which invoices are still outstanding. Revenue Health in Clinic Health also summarises your collection rate and overdue balance at a glance.

In Atlacare, the account owner goes to Settings then Data and chooses Export all clinic data. That downloads a ZIP of everything your practice holds: patients, appointments, clinical notes (every tier, with confidential notes labelled), invoices, payments, form submissions and the rest, as spreadsheet-friendly CSV files plus complete JSON. It's included on every plan, Free too. Uploaded files are listed but not included; download those from each patient's profile. You can also export just the patient list as CSV, or one patient's record with SAR export from the ⋯ menu on their profile. Every export is written to an audit log, and your data is always yours to take with you.

In Atlacare, go to Settings then Security and set up two-factor authentication with an authenticator app. After your password you then enter a 6-digit code, which keeps your account secure even if your password is guessed. Save your backup codes when you turn it on.

Use one of the backup codes you saved when you enabled two-factor authentication in Atlacare. If you no longer have those either, email [email protected] from the address on your account and we will help you recover access.

In Atlacare, go to Settings then Billing & plan to change plan, update your payment details or cancel. Monthly plans stop at the end of the current month and annual plans run to the end of the term. When your subscription ends your account moves to the Free plan and nothing is deleted; you can still export your data at any time. There is no lock-in and no cancellation fee.

You don't need to buy credits in Atlacare. Turn text messages on under Settings then Text messages on any paid plan. The Clinic and Practice plans include a monthly bundle (150 and 300 texts) that resets on the first of the month; anything beyond it, and every text on Solo, is pay-as-you-go at 5p and billed monthly. You can set a monthly limit in Settings then Text messages to control spend.

In Atlacare, archiving hides a record from everyday lists while keeping it, and it is reversible. Deletion is permanent: for patients this means anonymising the record so no personal data remains, which Atlacare only allows once the legal retention period has passed.

Atlacare applies the record-retention rules for your country automatically. In the United Kingdom that is 8 years from last treatment for clinical records and 6 years for financial records. You can see the rules that apply to you under Settings then GDPR & consent.

Atlacare erases by anonymising a patient record, clearing personal details while keeping the appointment and financial structure your accounts need. A record cannot be erased until its retention period has passed, which Atlacare enforces from the patient's last treatment date. The right to erasure does not override a legal duty to keep records.

Atlacare uses a small set of trusted providers: Railway (EU) for hosting and the database, Cloudflare R2 for EU file storage, Resend for email, The SMS Works (UK) for SMS, Daily.co (UK, London) for video consultations, Stripe for payments, Sentry for error monitoring, Loops (US) for email to clinic account owners only, and Google Analytics on public pages with consent. If a practitioner connects their own calendar, Google or Microsoft also handle that sync. The full list, with each provider's role and region, is on the sub-processors page. Patient health data is never sent to marketing tools and never used to train AI.

If you run a clinic in the United Kingdom and hold patient records, you almost certainly need to register with the ICO and pay the annual data protection fee. Check using the self-assessment at ico.org.uk. This is your responsibility as the data controller, separate from Atlacare.

Book a video appointment, or let patients choose "Video call" when they book online. The patient gets a secure link by email and can join 15 minutes before the start, giving telehealth consent the first time. You can open the call any time on the day and admit them from the waiting room. You can write the clinical note during the call, and the call is never recorded.

Most video problems are browser permissions. Allow your browser to use the camera and microphone, close other apps that might be using them, and refresh the page. A recent version of Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox works best for Atlacare video.

Yes, automatically. The booking confirmation and reminder emails for a video appointment carry the patient's secure join link, with a short checklist for before the call, and about an hour before the call the patient gets one more email with the link. The link works from 15 minutes before the start, so the patient can join with a single tap at the right time.

Outcome measures are standardised questionnaires that score a patient's progress. Atlacare includes the ODI, NDI, PSFS and DASH. They score themselves and are tracked over time, so you can show measurable improvement, which also feeds the Clinical Outcomes part of Clinic Health.

A treatment plan in Atlacare sets out a patient's goals, condition and the number of sessions planned, then tracks sessions completed against that plan. It gives you and the patient a clear view of where they are in their course of care.

Yes. Atlacare includes a CPD log under Settings then CPD log where you record your continuing professional development activities. This helps UK practitioners keep the evidence their professional body expects.

Campaigns in Atlacare cover your automated appointment messages (confirmations, reminders and cancellations) and one-off emails or texts to a group of patients, such as everyone with a certain tag or patients you have not seen for a while. Marketing messages only ever go to patients who have given marketing consent, and Atlacare blocks the rest automatically.

Atla Flow is Atlacare's automation tool. You pick a trigger, such as a new patient or a booked appointment, and Atla Flow runs actions like sending an email or SMS automatically. Ready-made templates for a new-patient welcome and a cancellation follow-up get you started in a couple of clicks. Flow emails and texts send on paid plans once your clinic has been verified.