Your providers are the people who actually do the work: the dentists, doctors, vets, stylists, hygienists, or technicians your customers book with. Adding them lets your AI receptionist offer the right person, check their availability, and put appointments on the correct calendar.
The page may be called Doctors, Vets, Stylists, or Providers depending on your business type. It's the same place.
Add a provider
- Open Settings → Providers (the label follows your industry).
- Click Add Provider (for example Add Doctor). With athenahealth connected, it opens a menu: Add Provider manually or Import from athenahealth.
- Fill in the details:
- Photo and color: an optional photo, and a color for the calendar
- Title (Dr., NP, PA, RN, DDS, MD and so on), First name and Last name
- Specialty, for example Orthodontics, Pediatrics or Sports Medicine
- Booking priority: lower numbers are offered first when the AI presents times
- Email and Phone (optional), only needed for calendar feeds or linking a login later
- Works at: pick every location they see patients at (at least one)
- Click Add provider to save.
- Set their hours: click their weekly hours on the list to open Manage Availability.
The provider is now bookable, and your AI can schedule appointments with them.
Provider vs. team member
These are two different things, and it's easy to mix them up:
| Provider | Team member | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Someone who delivers services | A user account with a login |
| Where | Providers page | Settings → Team |
| Needs a login? | No | Yes |
| Used for | Scheduling & AI booking | Accessing the app |
If someone both delivers services and needs to log in (say, a solo dentist), invite them under Settings → Team → Add team member with the Clinician role. The wizard can create their provider profile for you, or link an existing one.
Set availability and schedules
Each provider has their own working hours, so the AI only books them when they're actually available. On the Providers page, click a provider's weekly hours (tooltip Edit availability) to open Manage Availability and adjust their weekly hours per location and their time off.
Billing, supervision, and calendar
The provider editor also holds a few fields other features rely on:
- Billing identity: NPI (individual), License # and Taxonomy, printed on superbills. See Create and send superbills.
- Services offered: which services this provider performs.
- Rates: a table of your services with the practice price beside an optional rate for this provider. See Set client fees and rates.
- Supervision: the License status (Licensed, Associate, Intern, Unlicensed), a Supervisor, and Notes need a co-signature (Follow license status, Always, Never). See Notes due and co-signatures.
- Calendar sync: after saving, Set up creates a private link the provider subscribes to from Google, Apple, or Outlook. See Calendar feeds.
Who sees the details. Anyone in the account can see who works where: a provider's name, locations and hours. Their contact details (email, phone), billing identity (NPI, license number, taxonomy) and calendar link are shown only to staff at one of the provider's locations, the provider themselves, and the account owner. Everyone else sees those fields as Hidden, with the note "Contact details and billing identity are shown only to staff at this provider's locations."
Manage Availability is per location: weekly hours for each day, and a Time Off tab for date ranges with a reason (vacation, sick day, personal, conference, training, other), all day or by the hour. Online booking only offers times inside both the location's hours and the provider's.
Remove or deactivate a provider
Providers are deactivated, never deleted, so their history stays intact. Open the provider, click Remove provider (the word follows your practice's own term, so it may read Remove doctor or Remove clinician), and confirm. The toast reads "Provider deactivated".
- Nothing happens to their appointments: past visits stay on the records and future ones are not cancelled or reassigned by the app. Move any upcoming appointments to another provider yourself first if you want reminders to keep going to the right person.
- An inactive provider disappears from booking, from the AI's choices and from the online booking page, but still appears in reports.
- To bring them back, switch the list to Inactive (or All) and flip the row's toggle back on; the toast reads "Provider reactivated".
After you add providers
- Assign services so the AI knows who offers what: use Services offered on the provider, or manage your appointment types.
- Give them a login if they need one: Invite team members.