How to auto-sync Cliniko patients to your CRM

If you run an allied health clinic on Cliniko, you probably also use a CRM for marketing, recall sequences, and referral tracking. Maybe it’s HubSpot. Maybe it’s ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, or Pipedrive.

And if you’re like most clinic owners, here’s what happens every time a new patient books in: you open Cliniko, copy their name and email, switch tabs, paste it into your CRM, then go back and grab their phone number because you forgot it the first time.

Multiply that by twenty new patients a week across a couple of practitioners, and you’re looking at hours of mindless admin. Worse, things slip through the cracks. Patients don’t get added to your welcome sequence. Leads from your website form never make it into Cliniko. Your recall list is always slightly out of date.

There’s a better way.

Your options for syncing Cliniko to a CRM

Before we get into the how-to, here’s a quick lay of the land. There are a few ways to connect Cliniko to external tools today:

CRMConnect (by APIANT) is listed on Cliniko’s official connected apps page. It syncs patient data to HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, or Salesforce with bidirectional sync and 120+ field mappings. It works well, but it only supports those three CRMs — if you use Mailchimp, Pipedrive, Keap, or anything else, you’re out of luck.

Make (formerly Integromat) has a community-built Cliniko module. It’s powerful if you’re comfortable building multi-step scenarios, but the learning curve is steeper than most clinic owners want to deal with.

Pabbly Connect supports Cliniko through a direct API connection. Similar flexibility to Make, similar learning curve.

The Cliniko Zapier connector — what this guide covers — connects Cliniko to Zapier’s ecosystem of 7,000+ apps. That means you can sync patients to any CRM, email platform, spreadsheet, or project management tool, using a drag-and-drop interface designed for non-technical users. It includes dynamic dropdowns for practitioners, businesses, and appointment types, handles Cliniko’s shard routing automatically, and provides clean, labelled output fields that map directly to CRM contact properties.

The right choice depends on your stack. If you exclusively use HubSpot or ActiveCampaign and want deep, bidirectional sync, CRMConnect is solid. If you want maximum flexibility across tools without writing code, the Zapier connector is the way to go.

Step-by-step: sync new Cliniko patients to HubSpot

Here’s a complete walkthrough using HubSpot as the example. The same pattern works for any CRM — just swap the action step.

1. Get your Cliniko API key

Log into Cliniko and go to My Info → API Keys. Generate a new key (or copy an existing one).

Important: Your API key ends with a suffix like -au2, -uk1, or -ca1. This tells the connector which Cliniko data centre your account lives on. Copy the entire key including the suffix. If you leave it off, the connector can’t route your requests to the right server and you’ll get authentication errors.

Quick tip: if you also want to trigger on treatment notes later, make sure you’re using a key from a practitioner account, not a receptionist account. Treatment note endpoints require practitioner-level access.

2. Install the connector on Zapier

If you haven’t already, accept the invite link to add the Cliniko connector to your Zapier account. Once it’s installed, it appears alongside all your other connected apps.

3. Create a new Zap

From your Zapier dashboard, click Create Zap. For the trigger:

• App: Cliniko
• Event: New Patient
• Account: Sign in with your API key (the full key, including the shard suffix)

Click Test Trigger. Zapier will pull in a sample patient from your Cliniko account — you should see fields like first name, last name, email, date of birth, and phone numbers. If you see real patient data from your account, you’re connected.

4. Set up the HubSpot action

Now add an action step:

• App: HubSpot
• Event: Create Contact
• Account: Connect your HubSpot account

Map the fields from Cliniko to HubSpot:

Cliniko field	HubSpot field	Notes
First Name	First name	Direct map
Last Name	Last name	Direct map
Email	Email	Direct map
Phone Numbers → Number	Phone number	The connector returns phone numbers as a list — pick the first one, or use a Formatter step to grab the mobile specifically
Date of Birth	Date of birth	You may need a Formatter step to match HubSpot’s date format
City	City	Direct map
State	State/Region	Direct map

You can also set a static value in HubSpot to tag these contacts — for example, set Lead Source to “Cliniko” or add a Contact Tag of “Patient” so you can segment them later.

5. Test and turn on

Click Test step to create a real contact in HubSpot from the sample data. Check your HubSpot contacts to confirm it came through correctly with the right field mappings.

Once you’re happy, turn the Zap on. From now on, every new patient created in Cliniko will automatically appear in HubSpot within a few minutes.

Variations for other CRMs

The trigger step (New Patient in Cliniko) is always the same. Only the action step changes:

ActiveCampaign: Use the “Create or Update Contact” action. Map name, email, and phone. Add a tag like cliniko-patient so you can build automations that only target patients. ActiveCampaign’s custom fields work well for storing date of birth and patient ID.

Mailchimp: Use “Add/Update Subscriber” to add patients to a specific audience. Map first name, last name, and email. Use merge fields for any extra data. This is a great option if your main goal is getting patients into a nurture or newsletter sequence.

Pipedrive: Use “Create Person” and map name, email, and phone. You can also create a linked Deal automatically if you want to track patient lifetime value.

Google Sheets: Not a CRM, but surprisingly useful. Log every new patient to a shared spreadsheet for simple reporting, multi-location tracking, or as a backup data source. Use the “Create Spreadsheet Row” action.

The point is that because this runs through Zapier, you’re not limited to a handful of pre-built integrations. If the tool you use has a Zapier connector — and most do — you can connect it to Cliniko.

Going further

Once the basic sync is running, there are a few ways to make it smarter:

Filter by business or practitioner. If you run a multi-location clinic or have practitioners with separate marketing lists, you can add a Filter step in Zapier to only sync patients from a specific business or practitioner. The connector gives you dynamic dropdown menus for both, so you don’t have to look up IDs manually.

Sync updated patients too. The connector includes an Updated Patient trigger that fires whenever a patient’s record changes — useful for keeping your CRM in sync when patients update their phone number, email, or address. Because Zapier deduplicates by ID, each update fires as a separate event, so your CRM always has the latest info.

Create patients from your CRM. Going the other direction, you can use the Create Patient action to push new leads from your CRM into Cliniko. For example: when a new contact fills out a form on your website and enters your HubSpot pipeline, automatically create their patient record in Cliniko so reception doesn’t have to.

Trigger recall sequences. Use the New Patient Case or Updated Patient Case triggers combined with the Create Recall action to automatically schedule recall reminders when a treatment plan is created or completed.

Common questions

What about patients who already exist in Cliniko? Zapier triggers only fire for new events going forward. For existing patients, the simplest approach is a one-time CSV export from Cliniko, imported into your CRM. After that, the Zap handles everything automatically.

Does it work with multiple clinic locations? Yes. The connector supports all Cliniko businesses under your account. Use the dynamic dropdown to filter by business, or leave it unfiltered to sync patients from all locations.

What about shards? My team is in the UK but we treat patients in Australia too. The shard suffix on your API key determines which data centre you’re connecting to. If you have accounts on multiple shards, set up a separate Zap for each key. The connector handles shard routing automatically — you don’t need to think about API URLs.

Is this HIPAA compliant? Zapier offers a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) on their paid plans for teams that need HIPAA compliance. Check Zapier’s compliance page for the latest details. The connector itself doesn’t store any patient data — it passes it through Zapier’s platform to your chosen destination.

How often does it sync? Zapier polls for new patients every 1 to 15 minutes, depending on your Zapier plan. Free and Starter plans poll every 15 minutes; Professional and above poll every 1–2 minutes.

Get started

You can set up your first patient sync in about five minutes:

1. Grab your Cliniko API key (with the shard suffix)
2. Install the connector on Zapier
3. Create a Zap: New Patient → Create Contact in [your CRM]
4. Map the fields and turn it on

If you want a full walkthrough of the installation process, check out the complete setup guide.

For more workflow ideas beyond CRM sync, take a look at 5 Cliniko workflows you can automate with Zapier.

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