Psychologists
Testing engagements, report time, and mixed therapy, assessment, and consulting income tracked separately, so you can see which parts of the practice actually earn.
A Week With Several Kinds of Work
A psychologist’s week rarely looks the same twice. Monday might be four therapy hours. Tuesday and Wednesday go to a full battery with a family waiting on results. Thursday is scoring and writing, with nobody in the room. Friday there is a consult call with a school or an attorney’s office. All of it is your practice, and all of it earns at a different rate.
Most bookkeeping flattens that completely. Deposits land, they get marked as income, and the monthly report gives you one number. You can see money came in. You still cannot see whether the assessment work is carrying the therapy hours or the other way around. I spent more than fifteen years as a licensed nurse working in mental health, so the shape of your week is already familiar to me, and I keep books that hold the difference between the parts of it.
Who I Work With
Who I Work With
Licensed psychologists in solo and small private practice, PhD and PsyD, doing therapy, psychological and neuropsychological assessment, consulting, and forensic or evaluation work, or some blend of all of it. Usually one to ten people counting admin help and testing support.
Why These Books Read Differently
Why These Books Read Differently
An assessment is one engagement stretched over weeks. Intake, testing hours, scoring, report writing, feedback session. Payment often arrives in pieces, some up front and some at delivery. A month of deposits will not match a month of work unless somebody is tracking the engagement itself.
How I Keep the Books
The foundation is Full-Service Bookkeeping with income split by the kind of work you do. Therapy, assessment, consulting, and evaluation work each get their own line. Bank and credit card accounts are reconciled every month, so the numbers tie back to actual deposits instead of your best recollection. Nothing about your work needs explaining to me first, which means our conversations start at the useful part.
Overhead gets the same care. Protocol forms, record booklets, scoring credits, and test kits are a real cost of doing assessments, and they belong somewhere you can see them rather than buried in a general supplies line. Instrument purchases get recorded with enough detail that your tax preparer can make the depreciation call at filing time. For the work you bill directly, like an attorney’s office, a school district, or a private-pay evaluation, Invoicing keeps statements going out, payments matched, and outstanding balances where you can see them.
Income Split By Service Line
Income Split By Service Line
Your report shows what the therapy hours brought in, what assessments brought in, and what consulting added on top. For most mixed practices the answer is at least a little surprising, and it is the first thing you need before changing anything about your schedule.
Overhead Tracked Honestly
Overhead Tracked Honestly
Testing materials, scoring software, licensing and association dues, continuing education, office rent, and the small subscriptions that quietly stack up. Grouped so you can see what it costs to run a doctoral practice, and what it costs to run each side of it.
Where the Numbers Get Muddy
The problem I run into most often is a single income line. Every deposit from every kind of work lands in the same bucket. The practice looks fine in total. Then you sit down to decide whether to keep the standing Friday consult or open another assessment slot instead, and there is nothing in the books that helps you answer it.
Timing is the other one. A retainer for an assessment comes in during March, the testing happens in April, and the report goes out in May. If all of that money shows up as March income, March looks strong and May looks slow. Neither reading is true, and plans built on top of it tend to go sideways.
Report Time That Disappears
Report Time That Disappears
Scoring and writing take hours, and those hours do not produce a deposit of their own. When a fee gets set as though the testing session was the whole job, the real rate on assessment work quietly slides. Seeing revenue and cost by service line puts that back in front of you.
Invoices That Age Quietly
Invoices That Age Quietly
Work billed directly to attorneys, schools, organizations, or private-pay families can sit unpaid for months. It goes unnoticed because nobody is watching it. Tracked receivables get those balances in front of you while they are still easy to collect.
What Changes
Every month you get a report you can read in a few minutes between clients. What came in, by kind of work. What went out, grouped the way a doctoral practice actually spends. What that leaves you. If something looks off or you want a line explained, you call me and we talk it through in plain language. You are working with me directly, every month.
At tax time your books are already in order and ready to hand to your tax preparer. I do not prepare returns, and my job is to make sure the person who does has clean records without a scramble in March. The rest of the year you have the thing most practice owners are missing, which is a truthful view of which parts of the practice earn and which ones only feel busy. If that sounds like what you need, book a consultation and tell me about your practice.
Fees That Reflect the Whole Job
Fees That Reflect the Whole Job
Once you can see what an assessment engagement earns after materials, scoring credits, and the hours behind the report, setting fees stops being a guess. Same for deciding how many testing cases you want on the calendar in a given month.
A Mix You Choose On Purpose
A Mix You Choose On Purpose
Some psychologists find the assessment work is carrying everything. Others find the therapy hours are steadier and cheaper to deliver than they assumed. Either way, once the books tell you which is which, changes to your caseload rest on numbers you trust.
Helping the People Who Help Others
Let's Start With
a Short Conversation
Tell me where your books stand right now, even if the honest answer is that nobody has looked at them in a year. I'll ask a few questions and give you a clear idea of how I can help.
