Administration
Roles and permissions
Control what each person in your clinic can see and do.
Every user has one or more roles, and each role is a set of permissions. Open Setup > People and access > Roles to review them. A person who holds several roles gets everything each of those roles allows.
The Type column shows Built-in for the roles NeatPractice provides and Custom for roles your clinic made. To see what a role allows, open the menu on its row and choose Permissions.
Built-in roles#
NeatPractice starts every clinic with roles that match common jobs. Built-in roles cannot be edited, so they stay a known starting point; copy one when you need a variation.
| Role | Meant for | Patient access |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | The person responsible for the clinic. Everything, including billing for NeatPractice itself, seats and clinic settings | All patients |
| Clinic Admin | Day-to-day administration: users, roles, setup, support access | All patients |
| Billing Manager | Runs billing and payments, approves adjustments and refunds, manages seats | All patients |
| Biller | Works charges, claims, denials and payment posting | All patients |
| Front Desk | Registers patients, schedules, checks coverage, takes patient payments, applies or waives missed-visit fees and issues estimates | All patients |
| Therapist | Treats patients, documents visits, writes plans of care | Their caseload |
| Therapy Assistant | Documents visits under supervision | Their caseload |
| Clinical Supervisor | Everything a therapist does, plus co-signing, taking over drafts, clinical setup and school contract records | Their caseload, including the caseloads of people they supervise |
| Read-only Auditor | Reviews records, the audit log and every Setup page without changing anything or exporting | All patients, read only |
| Behavior Analyst | Applied behavior analysis (ABA) case lead: treatment plans, mastery approval, data corrections, the program library and technician supervision | Their caseload |
| Assistant Behavior Analyst | Writes ABA treatment plans and collects session data under a behavior analyst | Their caseload |
| Behavior Technician | Runs ABA sessions: their own schedule, data collection, session notes and their supervision records, with the learner summary instead of the chart. No billing, setup, payroll or reports | Their caseload |
| ABA Coordinator | Manages assigned technicians' schedules and sees their supervision, without clinical authoring | Their caseload |
| QA Reviewer | Reviews ABA notes and data for quality | All patients, read only |
The ABA roles matter only when your clinic has the ABA module; their ABA permissions do nothing without it.
The learner summary#
A Behavior Technician sees the learner summary instead of the patient chart, so their device shows only what a session needs: the name the learner goes by and their last initial, alerts and allergies, the emergency contacts, their own sessions with the learner over the next two weeks, their own visits and notes, and the learner's programs and behavior plan. Date of birth, identifiers, insurance, addresses and other contacts stay hidden; the visit and data collection screens still open from the summary. The Patients menu does not show for them; My learners lists their caseload instead. To give technicians more, copy the role and add Read on Chart (see Custom roles).
Some permissions belong to the Owner alone: changing the NeatPractice plan, buying or removing seats (the Billing Manager can also manage seats), editing clinic settings and deleting the clinic. Only an Owner can give someone the Owner role or take it away; for anyone else it shows locked on a user who holds it.
Who sees which Setup pages#
A Setup page in the table below shows in the menu, and opens from a typed or bookmarked link, only for people who can change what it holds. Everyone else gets Access Denied there. The audit log, support access, API keys, subscription and assistant pages keep their own permissions. Picking a payer, an appointment type or a cancel reason inside a form still works for every role; that needs only the Setup lookup, which every built-in role has.
| Setup pages | Shown with |
|---|---|
| Practice, Patient settings, Document categories, Intake, Locations, EVV, Offline devices, Clearinghouse | Setup: Practice: Manage |
| Appointment types, Scheduling settings, Scheduling limits, Overlap allowances | Schedule: Configuration: Manage |
| Disciplines | Setup: Practice: Manage or Setup: Clinical: Manage |
| Payers, Fee schedules, Modifier rules | Setup: Payers: Manage |
| Procedure codes, Diagnosis favorites, Posting rules, Reason codes, Adjustment types | Setup: Codes: Manage |
| Claim forms | Billing: Claims: Manage |
| Modalities, Therapy activities, the medication and allergy lists, Goal library, Outcome instruments, Smart phrases, Templates, Documentation rules, Restricted phrases, QA rules, Pick lists | Setup: Clinical: Manage |
| Providers, Credential types, Supervision | Setup: Providers: Manage |
| Physicians | Setup: Physicians: Manage |
| Communication | Setup: Reminders: Manage |
| Users | Users: Create, Update or Delete |
| Roles | Roles: Create, Update or Delete |
| Organization | Organization: Update |
| Payroll settings | Payroll: Periods: Manage, or Payroll: Pay: View to see it read only |
| Program library (ABA) | ABA: Plan: Author or ABA: Library: Manage |
| Prompt hierarchies, Criteria templates, Interventions (ABA) | ABA: Library: Manage |
| Note elements, ABA settings | ABA: Settings: Manage (ABA settings also opens with Schedule: Configuration: Manage) |
Setup: Settings: Browse opens every one of these pages read only: forms are locked and Add, Edit and Delete are hidden. The Read-only Auditor has it, and so do Owners and Clinic Admins. Your own Notifications page shows for everyone. With the built-in roles, a Therapist or Therapy Assistant sees only Notifications, Front Desk sees Physicians and Communication, a Biller sees Physicians and Claim forms, a Billing Manager sees the payer and code pages and Payroll settings (read only), and a Clinical Supervisor sees the clinical libraries and Disciplines.
Other people's drafts#
A clinical draft belongs to its author and the provider named on it. Two note permissions let others step in:
- Take Over makes the person the draft's author, so they can finish it (see Take over a draft). It has a scope: with Caseload, only drafts on their own patients. Clinic Admins and Clinical Supervisors have it.
- Edit Any Draft lets the person change any draft in the clinic without taking it over; every save is logged under their name. It has no scope and is off for every built-in role except Clinic Admin and Owner.
Both also need the permission to write that kind of document. Neither lets anyone sign for the named provider.
Filing incidents#
The Clinical: Incident Report permission lets a person file incidents in the incident register and keep editing, submitting and reading the ones they filed. Every built-in role except Read-only Auditor has it, so everyone else can report an incident by default. To stop a group of people from filing incidents, copy their role, turn Report off under Clinical: Incident, and give them the copy. Reading the whole register needs View, and reviewing incidents needs Manage.
Staff messages#
The Messaging: Staff Use permission lets a person open Messages, read and send messages, start and leave conversations, and see the unread count in the menu. Every built-in role except Read-only Auditor has it. To keep a group of people out of staff messages, copy their role, turn Use off under Messaging: Staff, and give them the copy; Messages then disappears from their menu.
Patient attestations captured again#
When a signed visit's date, times, place of service or codes change, the patient attestation is cleared. The visit permission Recapture Attestation lets a person collect it again on that signed visit (see When the visit changes after signing). NeatPractice Admins and Clinical Supervisors have it; it also needs Visits: Manage.
Custom roles#
To adjust a built-in role, copy it and edit the copy:
- Open the menu on the row of the role you want to start from and choose Copy.
- Enter a name for the new role, for example
Front Desk (evenings), and click Copy Role. - The copy opens in the permissions editor with everything the original allows. Turn permissions on or off, pick a scope for patient permissions, and click Save Changes.
- Assign the new role from Setup > People and access > Users.
You can also click New Role to start from an empty role, then choose Permissions on its row. Either way, you can only grant permissions you hold yourself. If the role or the permission list fails to load, the editor shows Try again and nothing can be changed until both load, so a save never replaces a role's permissions with a partial list.
Caseload or all patients#
Permissions that touch patient information come in two scopes:
- Caseload: only patients the person is assigned to on the care team, plus the patients of anyone they supervise.
- All: every patient at the locations the person can access.
In the permissions editor, each patient permission that is turned on shows a scope list with Caseload and All patients. A permission you turn on starts at Caseload. If a permission shows Scope with nothing chosen, pick one before you click Save Changes.
Pick caseload for clinicians who should see only their own patients. A clinician who needs one patient outside their caseload in an emergency can use break-glass access.
Other people's appointments#
A custom role's Other people's appointments setting (in New Role, or Edit on its row) decides what a person who sees only their caseload sees of everyone else's schedule:
- Hide: other people's appointments and staff events do not appear on their calendar, list, prints or hours meters. Every built-in role uses Hide.
- Show as busy: they appear on the calendar as locked Busy blocks, with the time but no patient or details, so a coordinator can book around them. They never appear in the appointment list.
Either way, booking checks still catch a clash, and say only That time is taken. when it involves an appointment the person cannot see. A person with several roles sees busy blocks if any of their roles shows them. Roles that reach all patients are not affected.
Other providers' visits and notes#
Two providers can share a patient: an occupational therapist and a speech therapist on the same chart, for example. Other providers' visits and notes, at the top of a role's permissions, decides what each sees of the other's work:
- Own only: other providers' visits and notes do not appear at all, on the chart, on the Visits and Documentation pages, in payer reports, on the Oversight page or in report results. ABA assessments and data sessions of other providers do not appear or open, nor do outcome results recorded in their notes. Last session, Copy Last Session and copying fields from the last note read only the person's own earlier notes, and a progress report they sign takes in only the outcome results they can read.
- List only: their visits and notes appear with the date, provider, discipline, type and status, marked with a lock. The note itself, its PDF, attachments, goal data, activities and outcome results stay closed, and their rows on the Oversight page and in report results do not open. Other providers' ABA assessments are listed locked, without their notes or sessions.
- Full: every visit and note on the charts the role can reach.
Whatever the setting, a person always sees their own visits and notes, co-treatment visits they took part in, notes of the providers they supervise and notes waiting for them to co-sign, sign or review. An active ABA correction grant opens the data sessions it covers. Support staff signed in as a user see exactly what that user sees. The EVV board keeps every provider's clock rows, since EVV is operational, but a visit the role cannot open shows no link to it.
Financial reports (payer mix, unbilled charges and the rest of the Financial category) are not covered by this setting either: they carry no note content, so the report and billing permissions alone decide who runs them. Clinical, documentation and productivity reports follow it.
Signed plans of care are not covered by this setting: everyone on a patient's care team reads every signed plan, recertification and amendment on that chart, since it is the treatment plan the whole team works from (see Plans of care).
Roles that read visits or notes for every patient (Owner, Clinic Admin, Billing Manager, Biller, Read-only Auditor) start at Full, since billing and oversight need the whole record. Caseload roles (Therapist, Therapy Assistant, Clinical Supervisor) start at Own only. Built-in roles cannot be edited: to change the setting, copy the role and change the copy.
Private notes are never covered by this setting: only their author ever reads them (see Private notes).
Location access#
Each user either works at every location or only at certain locations. To check, open Setup > People and access > Users, open the menu on the user's row, choose Edit and look at All locations. For a user limited to certain locations, turn All locations on and click Save Changes to let them work everywhere.
- Appointments, visits and charges show only for the locations a person can access.
- A patient shows if they are seen at one of those locations, or if they are on the person's caseload.