Per-session vs. monthly client payments — which to track, and how
5 min read
Most independent practices end up with one dominant way of charging: clients pay as they go, or they pay a monthly fee. There are always exceptions — the monthly client who books an extra session, the drop-in who never commits — but one model usually covers most of the book. Which one it is matters for record-keeping, because the two need completely different questions asked of them.
The trade-off, briefly
Per session: lowest commitment, easiest to sell, and the client can stop at any time. Revenue is unpredictable and unpaid sessions accumulate quietly.
Monthly or block: predictable income and better retention, because the client has already committed. Harder to sell, and you carry an obligation to deliver a set number of sessions.
Neither is correct in general. What matters for record-keeping is that they fail in opposite directions, so the same tracking approach cannot cover both.
They need different questions
This is the part that gets missed, and it is why a record kept the wrong way stops being trustworthy.
Per-session clients: "how many sessions are unpaid?" The risk is a balance building up unnoticed.
Monthly and block clients: "how many sessions have they used?" The risk is over-delivery — someone eleven sessions into a ten-session month — or a lapsed payment while sessions continue.
Track a monthly client session by session and they look like someone six weeks behind on payments. Track a per-session client with one monthly tick and every unpaid visit disappears under it. Either way the list is technically complete and practically useless.
Keeping it straight
Track in the model most of your clients pay in. The exceptions are easier to handle as exceptions than as a second system.
Per session: mark each session paid or unpaid as it is logged — including "not yet".
Monthly: mark the month paid once per client and let the session count run underneath it. Sessions outside the fee — a drop-in, an extra — get their own paid state.
Review once a month, not continuously. Per session: is anyone carrying a balance? Monthly: did anyone over-use, under-use, or have an unpaid extra?
Switching models
Practices do shift — most of your clients move from pay-as-you-go to a monthly fee, or the other way. The clean way is to close out the old model first: settle any outstanding per-session balances, or finish the paid month, and switch at a month boundary. Switching mid-month leaves sessions that belong to neither model, and those are the entries you will be unable to interpret in three months.
What about no-shows and late cancellations?
If you charge for them, they carry a payment state like any other entry but should not count as a delivered session — otherwise your delivery numbers inflate and a monthly client appears to have used a session they did not get. Keeping attendance outcome and payment state as separate fields is what makes this work; collapsing them into one "charged" flag loses the distinction permanently.
Blockday tracks payments per session or monthly — you pick the model in settings, and monthly mode keeps drop-in sessions on their own.
