Support activities let you record work you do for a client that isn't a face-to-face session and bill for it. Support activities are also useful for logging and billing non-contact time, such as report writing, care planning, or case notes, separately from face-to-face appointments. If you use an hourly rate service and need to bill for time outside the appointment itself, a support activity is the recommended way to do this.

This guide explains how support activities differ from appointments, how to create one from the calendar, and what to know once it's booked.

Before you begin

Before creating your first support activity in the calendar, make sure you have:

Created your services.
Assigned your services to your location and users.

The difference between an appointment & a support activity

Before you create a support activity it is essential to understand the difference between appointments and support activities to ensure that you choose the correct option, as they enable different features.

Appointments are client-facing services, such as consultations or telehealth sessions. When selected, you can enable features such as provider travel, telehealth, and appointment templates. Appointments also send notifications to clients and can include travel details and charges on invoices.

Support activities are non-face-to-face services, such as report writing or billable communications. These do not send notifications to clients and do not allow you to link travel. Support activities are tracked separately for reporting and billing purposes. For example, they're reported separately on the Practitioner Performance Report. In Australia, support activity services also have an NDIS type field, which the NDIS Bulk Upload report uses.

See this article if you wish to create an appointment.

Creating a support activity for a client will create a relationship and link that client to that practitioner moving forward.

This gives the practitioner access to the client's details, progress notes and other information. An account owner, practice manager or practice administrator can remove the link later. More on unlinking a practitioner from a client →

How-to

Create a support activity

Navigate to the Calendar tab.
Select the time slot under the location and practitioner you want.
Select Support Activity.
Enter the client's name and select the client from your existing clients, or create a new client. If a client has a client alert, such as needing wheelchair access, it will appear on this screen after they have been selected.
If the client doesn't have a case yet, you can create one.
Select your service. Only services that are enabled for the location and practitioner will be visible here.
Link the support activity to an existing case to ensure the session is tracked and allocated correctly for the client.
Confirm the date and time. The date and start time are automatically set to the slot you selected on your calendar, but both can be manually adjusted if needed. The end time defaults to the duration set in the service's settings.
Assign a room or resource to ensure the support activity appears in the rooms/resources calendar and helps avoid double-booking.
For recurring sessions, customise your repeat rules. If a clash occurs when booking a recurring session, you have the option to fix conflicts before confirming.
Add notes to the support activity if required. For support activities with recurring sessions, the note will apply to all sessions in the repeat sequence. However, once the repeat sequence is created, any updates to notes will only be applied to individual sessions.
Once everything's set, click Create to save the support activity. If anything required is missing, splose will prompt you to complete the details before moving forward.

Can't see your existing cases in the calendar?

It's likely the issue or expiry dates on the case don't match the date of the support activity.

Here's what you can do:

Create the support activity without linking a case
Head to the client's profile and update the case dates
Then, link the support activity to the case from there

Things to note

Clients don't receive notifications for support activities.
You can't add provider travel to a support activity. Book an appointment if you need to charge travel.
To stop a support activity from being invoiced, mark it as Do not invoice. It's then hidden from batch invoicing and the Uninvoiced report.
More on Do not invoice →
Once a support activity's invoice is marked as sent, you can no longer reschedule it. Only the room and case can be changed.
More on making changes to an invoice →
If the linked case has invoice details overridden, the invoice goes to the case's contact instead of the client's usual recipient.
More on managing dual funding →

Troubleshooting and FAQs

My service doesn't appear when I create a support activity. Why?

Only services enabled for that location and practitioner appear. Check the service is a support activity service and is assigned to the location and practitioner.