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First-time setup: General Preferences is typically one of the first pages to configure when setting up a new organization. Complete this before inviting staff or scheduling appointments.
This is where you customize patient-facing messages and configure invoicing behavior — it’s typically one of the first pages you set up. Your practice name, logo, and brand colors now live on the separate Brand page. The General Preferences page controls organization-wide settings that affect how your clinic appears to patients, how communications are sent, and how the system behaves by default. Navigate to Settings > General to access these options.
Changes auto-save about a second after you stop editing — there’s no Save button on this page. A save indicator at the top shows when an update is in progress.
Looking for your practice name, logo, or introductory text? Those moved to the dedicated Brand page (Settings > Brand), alongside your brand colors.

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Set the Default Timezone

The Default Timezone is applied to new locations by default. Existing locations keep their individually configured timezone, so changing this value does not retroactively update them.

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Configure Communication Templates

Decoda sends automated messages to patients at various points in their journey. Customize each template below to match your clinic’s voice and policies.
  • Reply-To Email: The email address patients see when they reply to automated emails from your clinic.
  • CC Email: An email address that receives a copy of all outgoing patient communications. Useful for compliance or administrative oversight.
  • Manual Invoice Text: The message included in manually sent invoices. Supports variables: {first_name}, {tenant_name}, {url}.
  • Receipt Text: Message displayed on payment receipts. Variables: {tenant_name}, {url}.
  • Reservation Cancellation Text: Template for text messages sent when an appointment is cancelled. Variables: {appointment}, {start_time}, {first_name}, {tenant_name}.
  • Successful Payment Text: Message shown to patients after a payment is processed.
  • Call Tags: Click Manage call tags to open a window that lists the labels the AI assistant applies when tagging patient calls. Add a new label, click a label to rename it (the change saves when you click away), or use the trash icon to remove a label you no longer use. These labels also show up as filter chips on the Calls page so you can slice call activity by topic.

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Configure Invoicing Rules

Control when and how often invoices are delivered to patients.
  • Max Invoices Per Day: Limit the total number of invoices sent per day across your organization. This prevents overwhelming patients with multiple invoices in a short period.
  • Max Invoices Per Minute: Rate limit for invoice delivery (this prevents the system from sending too many at once). Helps manage system load during bulk invoicing.
  • Invoicing Hours: Set the start and end time window for when invoices can be sent (e.g., 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM). Invoices queued outside these hours are held until the next eligible window.
  • Allow Invoicing on Weekends: Toggle whether invoices are delivered on Saturdays and Sundays.
  • Exclude Holidays: Toggle whether recognized holidays are skipped for invoice delivery.

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Customize Receipts

Tailor the look and delivery method of payment receipts.
  • Receipt Logo: Upload a separate logo specifically for receipts. This can differ from your practice logo if needed.
  • Automatically Send Receipts: Toggle whether receipts are sent to patients immediately after a payment is processed.
  • Default Receipt Communication Method: Choose SMS or Email as the default delivery method for receipts.
  • Quote SMS Text: Message sent to patients along with price quotes. Variables: {first_name}, {tenant_name}, {url}.

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Configure Payment Settings

These options control how payments and billing items are presented to patients and staff.
  • Processing fee handling: Pick how the card-processing fee shows up to patients. Surcharging and the Cash Discount Program can’t both be on — pick one:
    • Absorb the fee — the clinic pays the card-processing fee and patients see one price. This is the default.
    • Surcharging — the card-processing fee is added on top of the listed price when a patient pays by card. For example, a 3% fee on a $100 charge adds $3 to the patient’s bill. Not permitted in every state.
    • Cash Discount Program — listed prices are treated as card-inclusive. Patients paying by cash (or any other method you tick under Discount-eligible payment methods) get a discount off the sticker price. See the Cash Discount Program section below for the payment-method picker that appears when this is selected.
  • Hide Patient Payment Plans: Toggle to hide the payment plan option from patient-facing pages. Use this if your clinic does not offer payment plans.
  • Sold By Attribution: Who checkout fills in as the “Sold By” provider on new items. Pick one of:
    • Today’s appointment provider — the provider the patient saw today. This is the default. Items are left blank when the patient has no appointment.
    • Today’s appointment provider, then whoever is checking out — same as above, but walk-in sales with no appointment go to the staff member running the register.
    • Whoever is checking out — always the staff member running the register, even when the patient saw someone else today.
    • Nobody — staff choose every time — nothing is filled in; staff pick the provider on each item.
    Two rules apply no matter which option you pick. If the patient saw more than one provider today, items are left blank so staff can choose. And the options that use whoever is checking out only fill in a name for staff who are set up as providers — for front desk staff, those items stay blank.
  • Item Sort Type: Choose how services and products are ordered in billing views. Options include: Category, Usage, Defined Order, Name, or Price. When Defined Order is selected, a list appears so you can drag items into the order you want.
  • Show $0 Items in Checkout: When on, services and medications priced at $0 appear in checkout’s product search and Today’s Items. Off by default, so free items stay hidden unless you opt in.

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Tips

Control how tip percentages are calculated when a patient picks a tip on the customer display or the tip screen.
  • Tip Before Discounts: When on, tip percentages are calculated from the item subtotal before discounts are applied. Off by default — tips are calculated on the discounted total.
  • Tip Scope: Which items count toward the tip-percent calculation. Pick All Items, Services Only, Products Only, or Specific Categories.
  • Tip Categories: Appears when Tip Scope is Specific Categories. Pick one or more categories whose items count toward the tip calculation. The setting won’t save until you pick at least one.

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Cash Discount Program

When you pick Cash Discount Program under Processing fee handling, an inset picker appears right below the selection.
  • Discount-eligible payment methods: Tick the payment methods that qualify for the cash discount. When a patient pays with one of these, they’ll see a discount off the listed price at checkout. Payment methods are managed under payment settings; only the ones you’ve set up show up here.
Cash Discount Program and Surcharging can’t both be on — they’re two ways of shifting the same fee to the patient, so enabling both would double-charge cards. Picking one automatically turns the other off.

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Set the Default Home Page

Under the Navigation section, the Home Page dropdown sets the default page users land on after they sign in. The list is filtered to pages enabled for your tenant — for example, if Marketing is on, Growth-related routes appear; if it’s off, they don’t. This is an organization-wide default. Individual users can still navigate freely once they’re signed in.

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Configure Patient Settings

Define rules for patient registration.
  • Required Patient Fields: Select which patient profile fields are mandatory when staff create a new patient. Options include email address, phone number, date of birth, external ID, address, gender, first name, last name, lead source, primary location (shown only when your clinic has more than one location), Marketing Preferences (require staff to pick Opted In or Opted Out for SMS and email marketing instead of leaving them unset), and credit card on file.
  • Hide appointment memos by default: When on, the patient chart Memos section starts with appointment-tied memos hidden. Staff can still flip the Hide appointment memos switch on the chart for that visit. Turn this off if your clinic usually wants appointment memos visible right away.
  • Show Social History in Sidebar / Show Family History in Sidebar: Off by default. Turn either on to add that section to the patient sidebar so staff can review it without leaving the current tab. Social history still appears in the chart’s Additional Health Information section either way.

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Configure Scheduling

Control how providers are surfaced when staff are picking who performs a service.
  • Filter Providers by Service: When on, the provider list on the staff calendar only shows staff who are attached to the selected service. When off, every provider is offered, even ones who do not perform that service. Use this if your clinic offers services that only some providers are trained or licensed to perform — it stops the wrong provider from being booked by mistake.
  • Calendar event title format: Choose how appointment titles read on the calendar. Each provider’s lane shows only the service(s) they are performing. Options are Patient – Services, Services – Patient, Services only, Patient name only, Initials – Services, First name – Services, and Custom (enter manually). A live example updates as you pick. Choose Custom to type a title on every appointment yourself instead of having it built automatically.
Filter Providers by Service applies to manual booking from the staff calendar. Provider-to-service assignments are managed in Settings > Services on each service’s Providers tab.

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Analytics

  • Default Accounting Basis: Choose Cash or Accrual as the basis the analytics dashboards open in for everyone. Individual users can still switch their own view for the session without affecting anyone else. See Cash vs. Accrual Accounting for what the two bases mean and when to pick which.

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Manage Patient Tags

Create and manage tags used to categorize patients across your organization. From the Patient Tags section at the bottom of the General page, you can add a new tag, edit an existing tag’s name or color, or delete tags you no longer use. Tags created here become available everywhere patients are tagged in the app.

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Personal Preferences

Per-user settings like theme, calendar display options, notification sounds, and auto sign-off live on a separate page. See Personal Preferences for those settings. Your own Google Calendar connection is managed in Google Calendar.

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Advanced Configuration

The Google Calendar integration on the General page connects a single, centralized Google account for the whole organization. Decoda uses this account for appointment events, meeting links, and patient invitations.
  1. Scroll to the Google Calendar Integration section in General Settings.
  2. Click Connect Google Calendar and sign in with the Google account you want to centralize on.
  3. Authorize Decoda to read and write calendar events.
Once connected, the section shows a green dot and the email address that’s linked. To switch accounts, click the button again and sign in with a different Google account.Choose which calendar to use. If the connected account has more than one calendar, the Sync calendar dropdown lets you pick which one Decoda creates and updates appointment events on. It defaults to the account’s primary calendar. Changing it affects appointments going forward.Disconnect everyone. Click Disconnect to remove the centralized connection and every staff member’s Google Calendar link at once, and stop sync for all of them. Events already in Google stay in Google, and anyone can reconnect later. Only admins can connect, choose a calendar, or disconnect.
Individual staff members can connect their own personal Google Calendar from Settings > Google Calendar. The centralized account is used for appointment events when it is connected. Provider calendars can be used for appointments in clinics that do not use a centralized calendar.
The Idle Sign-out Timeout setting controls how long a user can remain inactive before being automatically signed out. Shorter timeouts improve security for clinics where multiple staff share workstations. Toggle it on under Authentication & Session in General Settings, then enter the timeout duration. Turn the toggle off to disable automatic sign-out.
For organizations that require strict network security:
  1. Add allowed IP addresses or CIDR ranges to the list under the IP Blocking section.
  2. (Optional) Use Exempt Users to pick staff members who should be able to sign in from any IP address — useful for owners or remote admins who travel.
  3. Toggle Enable IP Blocking on. Once enabled, only users from allowed IP addresses (or those on the exempt list) can sign in.
Use caution when enabling this feature. If your office IP changes or is entered incorrectly, staff may be locked out. Contact support if you need to reset IP restrictions.Restrict clock-in to clinic network is a separate switch in the same section. When on, staff can only clock in from an allowed IP address (for example, the clinic Wi-Fi) — every other action is unaffected. It uses the same allowed-IP list, so add at least one address before turning it on. Staff who try to clock in from elsewhere see a prompt to reconnect to the clinic Wi-Fi.
Viewing and editing the General page is gated by the broad workspace settings permissions:
  • View Settings — Required to open the General page.
  • Manage Settings — Required to edit any field on the page. Without it, the page is read-only.
Admin users have full access by default.Some sub-areas of Settings (for example, payment settings, scheduling settings, tags, locations, and developers) have their own more granular read/write permissions. If a teammate can open General but not a sibling page like Locations or Developers, check those role-specific permissions in Settings > Roles.
The following variables can be used in communication templates. The system replaces them with actual values when messages are sent.