automation
5 Cliniko Workflows You Should Automate Today
Still copying patient details between systems? Here are five workflows every Cliniko practice should automate — and how to set them up in under 10 minutes.
Chris Tune
If your front desk still copy-pastes patient details into a spreadsheet, or your bookkeeper still re-types invoice totals into Xero, you’re paying for software twice — once for Cliniko, and once in staff time.
The good news: these are exactly the kinds of jobs automation is built for. Here are five workflows every Cliniko-powered practice should have running in the background, and roughly how long each takes to set up.
1. New patient → CRM and mailing list
The workflow: Every time a new patient is created in Cliniko, push them automatically into your CRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign — whatever you use) and add them to the right segment in your mailing list.
Why it matters: New patients are your most engaged audience. Don’t lose them to manual data entry. A clean handoff into your marketing tools means automated welcome sequences, birthday emails, and follow-up campaigns just work.
Setup time: Around 10 minutes in Zapier. Map the Cliniko “New Patient” trigger to a “Create Contact” action in your CRM, then add a second action to subscribe them to your mailing list. Done.
2. Appointment cancelled → waitlist notification
The workflow: When an appointment is cancelled in Cliniko, automatically text or email a patient on the waitlist offering the slot.
Why it matters: Same-day cancellations are revenue you’ve already earned the right to. Capturing even half of them by filling the slot makes a real dent in your cancellation cost.
Setup time: 15 minutes if your waitlist is a Google Sheet; longer if you want fancy logic (closest practitioner match, location-aware, etc.). The N8N connector shines here — you can build branching logic that Zapier struggles with.
3. Invoice created → push to accounting
The workflow: The moment an invoice is generated in Cliniko, push it to Xero (or MYOB, or QuickBooks) as a draft or finalised invoice.
Why it matters: End-of-month reconciliation is the most-hated job in any practice. Automating the push eliminates a half-day of work and the inevitable rounding errors that come with re-typing.
Setup time: 10 minutes for the basic flow. Add an extra hop to email the patient a copy and you’re at 15.
4. No-show → automated follow-up sequence
The workflow: When an appointment is marked as a no-show in Cliniko, trigger a 3-step email sequence: a soft check-in same day, a rebooking offer 3 days later, and a final “we miss you” 14 days later.
Why it matters: No-shows are usually not about the appointment — they’re about life getting in the way. A gentle, automated nudge sequence recovers a surprising number of these patients without any human effort.
Setup time: 20 minutes once you’ve written the three email templates. The hardest part is the copywriting, not the automation.
5. End of day → daily summary email
The workflow: At 6pm every day, automatically email yourself (and whoever else needs it) a summary of today’s appointments, revenue, cancellations, and tomorrow’s schedule.
Why it matters: Most practice owners only look at numbers monthly. Daily visibility — even at a glance — is the difference between catching a problem on Wednesday and discovering it the following month.
Setup time: 30 minutes if you want it pretty. Or use the Power BI report pack and skip the email entirely.
Where to start
Pick the one that hurts the most right now and start there. Each of these workflows pays for itself within weeks — in saved admin time, in captured revenue, in fewer dropped balls.
If you want help getting started, take a look at the Cliniko Connector for Zapier (best for no-code setup) or the Cliniko Connector for N8N (best for complex logic, self-hosting, or higher volumes). Both run all five of these workflows — the difference is just how you’d rather build them.