Insurance setup
Before filing your first claim, two things must be in place: your billing identity (who the claim says is billing) and your payers (who it's sent to). Contracted rates and per-payer overrides come after, as needed.
In this guide, we'll cover:
- 1. Your billing identity
- 2. Payers
- 3. Claim rules (when a payer or clinician needs something different)
- 4. Contracted rates (reference)
- What's next
1. Your billing identity
Claims are assembled from identifiers in two places:
- Each clinician's own credentials — NPI, license, and taxonomy code — live at Settings → Profile, under Clinical Information. The taxonomy picker covers the common behavioral-health codes (counselors, psychologists, social workers, MFTs, psychiatrists, and more). The rendering clinician's NPI and taxonomy go on each service line of the claim (the NPI prints in CMS-1500 Box 24J).
- Practice-level billing details live at Settings → Insurance & Superbills: the Billing Provider Type (bill as the Organization or as the Individual clinician — this decides Box 33), Tax ID and how it displays, the Organization NPI (Type 2) (Box 33a), the practice taxonomy (Box 33b, when billing as an organization), and the Billing Provider Address (Box 33).
- Using your SSN as your Tax ID. Many solo clinicians bill under their SSN, and claims label it as one. The field hides it until you click the eye icon. Unless you choose otherwise under Display Tax ID or SSN on, an SSN prints on superbills (clients need it for out-of-network reimbursement) but not on invoices or statements. Good Faith Estimates always include your Tax ID. An EIN is free from the IRS and keeps your SSN off client paperwork.
This same page holds the "Enable Insurance Features" switch that turns on the Insurance area for your account.
2. Payers
Payers are the insurance companies you bill. Adding one is usually a search of the built-in national directory:
- Go to Settings → Payer Enrollment. Click Add Payer if this is your first payer, or Search available payers once your list has payers in it. The search box says "Type to search from over 3,400 payers in the network."
- Pick your payer and follow the enrollment steps so ERAs and claim status flow back electronically.
- Payer truly not in the directory? When a search finds nothing, the results offer Can't find your payer? Request a connection and Or add a payer manually (once you have payers, Add payer manually also sits next to Search available payers). The manual form gives you the honest caveat: "Manually adding a payer to your list doesn't create an electronic claim filing connection with the payer." Manual payers work for paper claims, superbills, and coverage records.
3. Claim rules (when a payer or clinician needs something different)
If a payer credentialed you under different details than your practice defaults — a different NPI, Tax ID, taxonomy, or address — or one payer wants the supervisor left off Box 17, or an intern's claims need a credential modifier, add a claim rule: from Settings → Insurance & Superbills → Claim rules ("Add rule") or the gear icon on the payer's enrollment row. A rule says "if the claim is for this clinician and/or this payer, then change these boxes." Blank billing-provider fields keep your practice-level settings. Claims that match the rule follow it; everyone else gets your defaults. Full guide: Claim rules.
4. Contracted rates (reference)
You can record what each payer has agreed to pay per service — open it from the Contracted rates icon on a payer's enrollment row. One thing to be clear about, straight from the page: "Reference only — contracted rates do not affect billing amounts or claims." They're your in-network cheat sheet for spotting underpayment on ERAs, not a rate engine. (Client-facing estimates come from the coverage's copay/coinsurance fields — see Balances & deductibles.)