Guide to Getting Started with Billing

Starting billing in a new practice or a new EHR can feel like a lot. This guide gives you a clear overview of how billing works in Sessions Health so you can move forward with confidence.

In this article:

• What Sessions Health Handles
• What You Need Before You Start Billing
• How Self Pay Billing Works
• How Insurance Billing Works
• What Claims Are and How Claim Status Works
• Ready to Get Started?

What Sessions Health Handles

What Sessions Health Does For You

Sessions Health handles the technical parts of billing so you can stay focused on your clients. The system creates bills, builds claims, submits them electronically, tracks claim status, and organizes payments in one place. Sessions Health uses Claim.MD as its clearinghouse for electronic claim submission and status updates.

What You Still Manage

You still make decisions that depend on your clinical judgment and your payer relationships. This includes understanding your contracts, checking benefits when needed, and following up with payers if something looks off.

What You Need Before You Start Billing

Before you create your first bill or claim, make sure you have the basic information that billing depends on. You do not need to configure anything here. This is simply the information you will rely on as you work.

• Practice and provider details (such as Taxonomy Code and NPI)
  • Account Settings > Business Information and Account Settings > Members
• Service codes and rates
  • Billing Settings > Services
• Client insurance information
  • Client > Billing > Settings > Insurance
• Client billing contact (for minors)
  • Client > Contacts

Having these items ready makes the billing workflow smoother and more predictable.

How Self Pay Billing Works

Self pay billing is the simplest workflow in Sessions Health. You create a bill for the session, send it to the client, and record payment when it arrives.

Bills move through three statuses, so you always know where they stand: Pended, Open, and Complete. A bill must be Open before a client can pay it or before you can generate a superbill. A bill is marked Complete only when the full balance has been paid.

The basic steps are:

1. Add the session
2. Create the bill
3. Send the bill to the client
4. Record the payment when it arrives

This workflow is fast and reliable because there are no external systems involved.

How Insurance Billing Works

Insurance billing adds a few more steps because claims must be submitted and processed by the payer. Sessions Health guides you through each part of the process.

Please note that enrollment can take several weeks to process, so you may not be able to submit claims immediately.

The basic steps are:

1. Add the session
2. Create the bill
3. Generate the claim
4. Submit the claim to the payer
5. Track the claim status as updates come in
6. Record the insurance payment when it arrives

Once you understand this flow, the process becomes much easier to manage.

What Claims Are and How Claim Status Works

A claim is the document you send to the payer to request reimbursement for a service. Sessions Health builds the claim for you based on the bill and the client’s insurance policy. Claims are submitted electronically, and status updates return to your Claims page automatically.

As claims move through the clearinghouse and payer systems, you may see updates such as:

• Queued For Submission
• Sent
• Received
• In process
• Paid
• Needs Review
• Denied

These statuses help you understand where the claim is in the process and when you may need to take action.

Ready to Get Started?

Your first step is to configure your Billing Settings and Billing Automation Settings.

Next, ensure you have your CPT codes configured by visiting this article on Managing CPT & Service Codes.

If you are ready to set up your account for insurance billing, see our Guide to Getting Started with Insurance and review your Insurance Settings.