Record Headway or Alma Payments in SimplePractice
By George Ruan • October 7, 2026
Last reviewed: October 7, 2026.
If a client’s sessions are billed through Headway, Alma, Spring Health, or a similar platform, set that client up in SimplePractice so your practice does not also file claims or charge the client. Add the platform as its own payer, then record what the platform pays you once, using the method SimplePractice documents for external platforms.
The order matters. Recording payouts is bookkeeping; the expensive mistakes happen earlier, when the same visit is billed twice.
Sections
First, stop your own billing for platform clients
When a practice tells us a client is billed through an outside platform, we mark that client as externally billed: we do not file insurance claims for the client’s visits and we do not collect from the client, because the platform handles both. That one setting prevents most of the problems below.
Add the platform as its own payer. Name it after the platform, not the client’s insurance company. Pointing it at the real insurer, such as Aetna or Blue Cross, invites someone to send a claim there directly.
Leave the member ID blank if your setup allows it. Do not invent an ID to get past a required field; a fake ID on a real-looking payer is how a claim slips out later.
Turn off automatic collection for that client. The platform collects the client’s share, so a card on file in your EHR should not be charged for those visits.
The double-billing trap during a transition
Most trouble shows up when a client moves between a platform and your own insurance billing, in either direction. Before we file any claim for a client who was previously billed by another biller or platform, or who sat on a pending-insurance hold during the switch, we confirm with the practice that the other party did not already bill those dates. Filing the same date of service twice tends to produce duplicate denials, and if both claims pay, a recoupment later.
We have seen what a duplicate looks like from the payer side: a resubmission sent as a brand-new claim instead of a correction was flagged as a duplicate, and the payer rejected the copies while the original kept processing. It is fixable, but it costs weeks. If you are leaving a platform, our guide to leaving Headway, Alma, or Grow covers the credentialing side of that move.
Record the platform’s payouts
SimplePractice’s external-platform recording guide describes adding the platform under Settings > Client billing and insurance > Payers with Add payer manually and Other coverage, then assigning it in the client’s Billing and Insurance settings. It offers two reporting approaches:
Combined: record the full amount the platform reports for each appointment as insurance income, with the client owing nothing in SimplePractice.
Split: record the insurance portion as insurance income and the client portion the platform collected separately. The guide uses the Check method for that client portion with the platform named in the check number field. That is a labeling convention, not a new check from the client.
Pick one approach with your bookkeeper and keep it. Either way, each appointment should be recorded once: a $120 session should not appear as $120 of insurance income plus another $30 of client income.
Start from the platform’s payout statement and match each line to an appointment by date of service.
Check whether a payment is already posted for that appointment before adding one; another staff member may have entered it.
Post a few, then compare appointment balances and your report totals to the statement before doing the rest.
Hold any line you cannot match. Ask the platform to explain fees, offsets, or refunds rather than spreading a difference across visits.
SimplePractice’s insurance-payment guide notes that an amount you cannot allocate can stay unallocated on the payment. That is better than forcing it onto the wrong visit.
If platform-billed visits are still sitting in your unbilled list, do not submit them to clear the list; clear Ready to File the safe way. For payments a client made to you directly, see recording cash or check payments.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I enter the Headway client’s real insurance as their payer?
No. Use a payer named for the platform. Listing the underlying insurer makes it easy for a claim to go out from your practice for a visit the platform already billed.
A client switched from Alma to my own billing. Can I bill their recent sessions?
Only after confirming which dates the platform billed. Bill only the dates it did not, and keep the confirmation with the client’s billing notes.
Sources
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Founded by George Ruan, Dax Earl, and Andrey Goder, Bomi helps independent therapists and group practices with insurance billing, credentialing, and payer follow-up. Bomi grew out of Dax’s experience helping his mother with her therapy practice, with a clear purpose: reduce the administrative burden of insurance while keeping practice owners in control.
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