Setting up therapy practice management software should take minutes, not an afternoon, and Serene is built so it does. This guide walks a therapist through the whole account setup: signing in, the setup checklist that builds your profile, and the connections that make bookings and your calendar actually work together. By the end you will have a live practice that can take its first appointment.
Serene sign-in uses your Google account. On the sign-in page you will see a single Continue with Google button, and choosing it opens Google's own sign-in window where you pick or enter the account you want to use. There is no separate email-and-password step to remember, and no confirmation email to wait for, because Google handles the identity for you.
The account you pick becomes the login for everything in Serene: your dashboard, your public booking page, your session notes, and your billing. Use the Google account you already use for practice work, since booking confirmations, client messages, and payout notifications all flow to that address. If you run a practice with other clinicians, each person signs in with their own Google account and you connect them through a team later, rather than sharing one login.
The first time you sign in, your home screen shows a setup checklist headed "Let's set up your practice." Each row is one part of getting your practice live, and Serene guides you through them in order. Only the current step is active, so you always know what to do next, and each row checks itself off automatically the moment the underlying information is in place.
Every step opens a small panel where you fill in that one piece and save, and you never leave the home screen to do it. You can stop partway through and come back later, and finished steps stay editable, so if you want to change your bio or your hours after the fact you just open that row again. The checklist has seven steps.
This step is your identity on the platform, the information a client sees when they land on your page. You provide your full name, which appears as your professional name, and an about you bio written in a simple rich-text editor. The bio is where you tell a client who you work with and how you practice.
A warm, specific bio does more for bookings than a long list of credentials, so write the about you section for the person deciding whether to reach out, not for another clinician. You can add social links like your LinkedIn and website later from your profile settings.
This step describes the care you provide. The important field here is expertise, a multi-select where you pick the areas you focus on, up to ten. A client filters and decides on fit partly from these, so choose the ones that genuinely describe your work. You can also set an optional practice name, which defaults to your display name if you leave it blank, and your years of experience.
This step connects the calendar that keeps your practice from double-booking. When you choose Connect, a Google window opens to authorize access. Once you approve, Serene reads your existing commitments so it never offers a client a time you are already busy, and it writes new bookings back to your calendar so they sit alongside the rest of your day.
If a popup blocker stops the window from opening, allow popups for Serene and choose Connect again. You can read more about how availability and scheduling work on the scheduling features page.
This step is the days and hours you take appointments, plus your timezone. You add time blocks per day, for example ten in the morning to five in the afternoon on weekdays, and Serene turns those into the bookable slots clients see. Your timezone makes sure a client in another region sees the correct local time for each slot.
A service is what a client picks when they book you, so every practice needs at least one. You give it a name, a short description, a duration in minutes, and a price in the currency you choose. If you offer a free consultation, a single toggle marks the service free and clients are never asked to pay for it.
This is the quick version of a service. Later, under your profile settings, you can fine-tune it with multi-currency pricing, intake forms, and more, and any service you create here is fully editable there.
This step tells Serene how clients pay you. Serene never holds your money, clients pay you directly, so this step is about pointing clients at the right place to send it. You pick one of two methods:
Once you pick a method you enter the matching link or ID, and Serene validates it so a mistyped link or ID is caught before it ever reaches a client. If a service is free, there is nothing to collect for it, so this step only matters once you have a paid service.
The final step is a confirmation. When you mark yourself ready, Serene finishes the setup, generates your public booking page, and takes the checklist off your home screen. Your practice is now live and can take its first appointment.
Once your account is set up, every client who books with you gets their own private space called the client portal, where they can see their appointments, complete any intake forms you assign, and view documents you share. You do not set this up separately, it comes with your practice. Clients reach it from the find your portal page, and you can see how it works from the client portal features page.
With your profile complete, your calendar connected, your schedule set, a service created, and payments in place, share your public booking page link with one client and watch a booking flow through end to end. From there, the highest-value next step for most practices is writing your first session note, which is where Serene saves you the most time week to week and is covered in more depth on the session notes features page.