Practice Better Automation Not Working? Check these five things

You built the automation. You double-checked it. And it's just not doing anything.

Practice Better's automations are reliable once they're configured correctly. When one isn't firing, it's almost always one of five things. Here they are in the order we check them.

1. It's a shared automation that hasn't been enabled for that team member

This is the most common one by a wide margin, and it catches almost every multi-practitioner practice at least once.

On team accounts, a shared automation still has to be enabled per team member before it runs for them. So it can be working perfectly for you and doing nothing at all for your associate.

Check the automation's settings for each person who needs it.

2. The client was already there before the automation existed

Automations aren't retroactive. They act on events that happen after they're switched on.

So if you built a program automation last week, anyone who enrolled before that gets nothing. The same applies to bookings and packages that already existed.

For programs, go to the program's Enrollments tab and invite existing clients manually. For everything else, the fix is usually a one-time manual pass for the people who predate the automation.

3. Different services need different forms, but it's one automation

A single "send forms" automation applies all of its selected forms to all of its selected services.

So if your initial consult needs a full intake and your follow-up only needs a short check-in, one automation will send both forms to both appointment types. The fix is one automation per service when the forms differ.

This one doesn't look like "not firing." It looks like clients receiving the wrong paperwork, which can be more confusing to diagnose.

4. The feature isn't on your plan

Practice Better gates features by plan tier. If an automation acts on something your plan doesn't include, it has nothing to act on.

A few that commonly catch people: recurring forms, SMS reminders, group sessions and Zapier all require Professional or above. Custom notification templates at the service level also need Professional.

Check your tier under My Subscription before you spend time debugging the automation itself.

5. A permission is missing, and it takes two

Some automation actions need more than one permission turned on for the person running them. These are easy to miss because granting one looks like it should be enough.

A couple of documented examples:

• Payment plan automations need both Automations and Invoice creation.
• Recurring sessions need both Automations and Client bookings.

If a team member can see the automation but it isn't behaving for them, check for a missing partner permission.

One thing that isn't a bug

Practice Better's native automations are a trigger-and-action list. Something happens, then something else happens.

There's no wait step and no branching. So an automation that's meant to "wait four days, then send this only if they haven't booked" isn't failing. That logic just isn't part of what the native automations are built to do. Anything sequenced or conditional needs to live in a separate system.

Quick checklist

• Enabled for every team member who needs it?
• Were the affected clients there before the automation existed?
• Does each service need its own automation because the forms differ?
• Is the feature on your plan?
• Does the team member have both permissions the action needs?

Would rather hand this to someone?

Our Practice Better setup is $997 for one practitioner, one location and up to three programs, whether you're building from scratch or fixing what you have. Form mappings, automations, permissions, all of it, tested end to end.