Practice Management Software for UK Group Practices (2026)

A note on who wrote this

We built My-Therapy-Suite, one of the platforms covered here. We have included it because it belongs in a comparison for this audience, and we have not put it first. The criteria section is written so this guide is still useful if you ignore our platform entirely. Where we make a claim about another provider, verify it with them, because software changes faster than articles do.

What actually breaks when a practice grows

Most practices do not choose group practice software. They grow into a solo tool and then live with the consequences. The failure points are consistent.

Access is usually all or nothing. A genuinely single-user tool has one login, so adding three associates means either a shared login, which is a data protection problem waiting to happen, or separate accounts with no shared view, which leaves the practice owner unable to answer a simple question about capacity or income without asking each therapist individually. Tools that do support several users often offer only a coarse split between administrator and everyone else, so anyone with an account effectively sees everything and the same problem returns one level down.

Oversight and confidentiality get confused. A practice owner has a legitimate need to know who is seeing whom, whether risk has been flagged, whether a therapist is over capacity, and whether the practice is being paid. A practice owner does not usually need to read the content of a session note. Software that offers only full access or no access forces you to over-share by default.

Money gets manual. Associates are usually self employed. Either the practice invoices the client and pays the associate a share, or the associate invoices the client directly and pays the practice a room or referral fee. Both are normal. Most software assumes neither.

Onboarding and offboarding are undefined. A therapist joins and needs a calendar, a note template, permissions and a booking page in an afternoon. A therapist leaves and their clients need reassigning while their records stay intact and accessible. If your platform has no concept of this, every arrival and departure is a project.

Reporting stops at the individual. You can see one therapist's sessions. You cannot see the practice: waiting list length, income per therapist, no show rates split out. That is the information you need to make decisions, and it is the information solo tools do not produce.

If two or more of those sound familiar, the problem is not that your team needs to be more organised. It is that the tool is doing a different job to the one you now need.

The nine criteria that matter for a team

Feature lists all look the same. These are the things that actually separate platforms for multi-therapist practices, with a way to test each one during a trial rather than take it on trust.

1. Role based access, preferably customisable. Look for distinct roles rather than a single admin toggle: practice owner, clinical lead or supervisor, practitioner, reception or administrator, and finance. Reception needs the calendar and contact details and nothing clinical. Finance needs invoices and not notes. A clinical lead may need risk information across the practice without full note access.

Roles and requirements may differ from practice to practice. Therefore, it is preferable to have the option to create your own roles and permissions.

Test it: create a reception user in the trial and try to open a session note. If you can, the roles are cosmetic.

2. Where the confidentiality line sits. Some platforms separate the clinical record from the therapist's own process notes. Some allow notes to be visible to a supervisor but not to administrative staff. Some make everything visible to anyone with an account. Decide where your line is before you look at software, because otherwise the software will decide for you.

Test it: write a note as one practitioner and log in as another practitioner to see what is visible.

3. Enquiry matching and shared waiting list. When a new client contacts a group practice, deciding which therapist they should see is a clinical judgement, but in most practices it happens by hand, under time pressure, or simply based on who has a slot free. Solo tools have no concept of it, because a solo practice has one therapist. Look for a platform that matches an enquiry to the therapist who fits on specialism, modality and availability, and holds the waiting list across the whole team rather than in separate diaries.

Test it: add an enquiry in the trial and see whether the system helps you route it to the right therapist, or just drops it in one person's inbox.

4. Associate payment handling. Ask specifically how the platform supports working with self-employed associates.

Test it: run one full billing cycle for two therapists in the trial, one self-employed and one employed by the practice.

5. Onboarding and offboarding a therapist. How long does it take to add a practitioner with the right permissions, their own booking page and the practice's note templates. What happens to a leaver's clients and records.

Test it: add a user and time it. Then deactivate them and check whether their historic records are still readable.

6. Multiple locations, rooms and hybrid working. If you run more than one site, or a mix of in person and online, the calendar needs to understand rooms and locations rather than just people.

7. Practice level reporting. Sessions, income, cancellations and no shows, by therapist, by location, by period. Waiting list and enquiry to first session conversion. Without this you are running the business on instinct.

8. Supervision and CPD records. UK accredited therapists need supervision, and professional bodies set CPD expectations. If the practice carries any responsibility for evidencing this across a team, having it in the same system rather than a shared drive is worth more than it sounds.

9. Making Tax Digital and clean records. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is being introduced in phases based on qualifying income. It applies to individuals rather than to a practice as an entity, so each self employed associate may fall inside it on their own income, as may the practice owner where the practice is unincorporated, while a practice run as a limited company sits outside it and deals with Corporation Tax instead. A platform that produces clean digital records, or connects to MTD directly, removes an annual argument with your accountant. Check the current thresholds and timing in the HMRC guidance linked at the end.

The data controller question most associate agreements never answer

When a self employed associate sees clients under your practice's name, who is the data controller for those client records? It might be the practice. It might be the associate. It might be both jointly. The answer depends on who decides why and how the data is processed, which in practice depends on how your practice is actually set up: who holds the client relationship, who sets the terms, whose privacy notice the client receives, and what happens to the records if the associate leaves.

It matters because the controller carries the obligations. Subject access requests, breach reporting, retention decisions and the response to a court order or police production order all land on the controller. If your associate agreement is silent on this, you have an unallocated legal risk sitting inside the arrangement.

Two practical steps. Write the answer into your associate agreements explicitly, including what happens to records when an associate leaves. Then check that your software can actually support the answer you have written, because a platform that gives every practitioner an independent account with no practice level record may be describing a very different arrangement to the one on paper. The ICO guidance on controllers and processors, linked below, is the place to work this out, and it is worth a short conversation with a solicitor if your practice is large or the associate relationship is unusual.

The main options, by the kind of team

The table gives the shape of the market. The notes explain the fit. Confirm pricing and current features directly with each provider, because both change.

WriteUpp. A cloud system for healthcare professionals in use since 2008, across counselling, physiotherapy and other disciplines. A sensible default for a small team that wants something proven without unnecessary complexity. Because it serves several disciplines, the terminology and defaults reflect healthcare generally rather than talking therapy in particular.

Zanda, formerly Power Diary. Genuinely comfortable as a practice grows into multiple calendars and clinicians, and well regarded in allied health settings. It was built outside the UK, so confirm where data is hosted, who the subprocessors are, and how any international transfers are safeguarded before you commit a whole team to it.

Cliniko. Clean, reliable, widely used in multi disciplinary clinics. The same hosting and transfer due diligence applies. It is a clinic tool that therapy practices use rather than a therapy tool.

Splose. An Australian platform for allied health, now marketing into the UK, with a strong line in AI-assisted documentation, waitlist and intake automation. Capable and well reviewed, but built for physiotherapy, occupational therapy and similar disciplines rather than talking therapy, so the terminology and defaults reflect that. As with any platform built for another market and another profession first, confirm where data is hosted, how international transfers are handled, and review the DPA.

Sessionly. UK built, with counselling agencies and CICs explicitly in mind. UK outcome measures scored automatically, a clear separation between the clinical record and private process notes, and BACP aligned retention. Strong on exactly the oversight and confidentiality problem described above. At the time of writing it does not offer bulk import or built in payments, so plan migration and client payments separately.

Konfidens. A Nordic platform being adapted for the UK, combining scheduling, secure notes, video, payments and a therapist directory. As with any platform built for another market first, review the Data Processing Agreement for your UK practice.

The US platforms. SimplePractice, Jane and Ensora, formerly TheraNest, are polished and popular, and designed primarily around HIPAA and the US healthcare market rather than UK GDPR. They can be run from the UK. For a UK only group practice, make sure to do due diligence.

My-Therapy-Suite. Our own platform. It covers scheduling, client records, session notes, invoicing, online booking, secure messaging, video sessions, supervision and Making Tax Digital in one place, with role based access completely customisable and preconfigured roles. Bookkeeping is built in, which for a practice paying several associates is important. We are honest about stage: we are early, working with a small group of practices, and our track record is shorter than the established names above. If you want the whole administrative operation in one UK specific place and are comfortable with a newer platform, we are worth a look. If you want the long track record, that is not us yet.

Think about your total price, not the headline price

Group practice pricing is usually per seat, sometimes with a base fee, sometimes with add ons priced separately. Two platforms with similar headline prices can differ by a great deal once a real team is on them.

Work out your actual monthly cost like this. Take your current number of users and the number you expect in twelve months. Then add the things priced separately: online booking, video minutes, SMS reminders, extra storage, additional locations. Finally add the tools you will still be paying for alongside it, most commonly accounting software, an e-signature tool and a video platform.

That total, not the headline price, is what you are comparing. It is also the number that tells you whether an all in one platform is genuinely cheaper or just differently priced.

Migrating a team

Migration is the reason most group practices stay on software they have outgrown. It is manageable if you plan it.

Ask every shortlisted provider three questions before you decide. Do you offer bulk import of clients, appointments and notes, or is it manual. What formats do you accept. The answers vary widely and the difference between a supported import and a manual one is weeks of clinical time.

Then run it in this order. Export everything from the current system first and keep the export regardless of what happens next. Move client records and appointments before you move historic notes, because appointments are time critical and history is not. Set a hard read only date on the old system so nobody is writing notes into a platform you are leaving. Keep the old export archived for your retention period even after the old subscription ends.

How to run a trial with a team

The most common mistake is that the practice owner trials the software alone and then announces it. Adoption is where group practice software actually fails, and your therapists will find the problems you will not.

Put two or three real practitioners on the trial. Have each of them run their real workflow for a fortnight: book a client, write a real note, raise an invoice, handle a cancellation. Have your reception or admin person attempt something they should not be able to do, so you find out whether the permissions are real. Run one full billing cycle, including an associate payment. Then ask each of them one question: would you rather use this or what we have now. If the answer is not clearly yes from most of them, the migration will stall regardless of the feature list.

Finally, check the exit. Export your data during the trial, not at the end of a contract. A platform that makes leaving difficult is telling you how it intends to treat you later.

Frequently asked questions

About this guide

Written by the team at My-Therapy-Suite, a UK practice management platform for therapists. We have disclosed our involvement openly and organised the comparison by practice fit rather than by ranking. Nothing here is legal, tax or data protection advice. Pricing and features change, so verify specifics with each provider before deciding. Last updated August 2026.