Free tool for private practice therapists
What should you charge per session? Enter the take-home pay you want, your practice expenses, your tax set-aside, how many sessions you can realistically hold, the weeks you work, your no-show rate, and any sliding scale. You'll get the fee per session you need, the revenue behind it, a table by caseload, and how your current fee compares. For counselors, LPCs, LMFTs, social workers and psychologists in private practice. Free and private: everything runs in your browser, and no client information is entered.
Full fee per session
$153.43
With 10% of sessions at a 40% discount, a $153.43 full fee averages $147.29 per paid session, enough to take home $80,000 after a 25% tax set-aside.
| Gross revenue needed 846.4 paid sessions × $147.29 | $124,666.67 |
|---|---|
| Business expenses | −$18,000.00 |
| Profit before tax | $106,666.67 |
| Tax set-aside 25% of profit | −$26,666.67 |
| Your take-home pay | $80,000.00 |
| Average collected per paid session After the sliding scale | $144.00 |
|---|---|
| Projected gross revenue | $121,881.60 |
| Projected take-home pay $2,088.80 short of your goal | $77,911.20 |
Enter your current full fee to see your projected take-home pay.
| Sessions | 40 weeks | 46 weeks | 48 weeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 a week | $235 | $205 | $196 |
| 20 a week | $176 | $153 | $147 |
| 25 a week | $141 | $123 | $118 |
| 30 a week | $118 | $102 | $98 |
Planning estimates only, not tax, financial or legal advice. For private-pay planning: insurance-paneled rates are set by payers. No client information is entered or stored.
Track your real caseload against this fee
The Private Practice Business System is an Excel workbook with a fee and caseload calculator, a session log with late-cancel and no-show fees, income and expenses with a tax set-aside, and a goal planner. $39 one-time.
See the Private Practice Business System50% off: $19.50 with code FLASH24 until Mon Oct 19, 2:30 PM CT
Built for Microsoft Excel. No subscription.
How it works
Many clinicians set their fee by looking at what colleagues charge. That tells you what the market accepts, not what your practice needs. This calculator starts from the income you want to take home and works back to the fee that pays for it, after the costs of running a practice, the tax bill, and the hours that end up empty.
Three things push the number up that are easy to forget: weeks you don't work (vacation, holidays, sick days, conferences), sessions that no-show or cancel late without a fee, and sliding-scale sessions that bring in less than your full fee.
Assumption: the tax set-aside is applied to profit (revenue minus business expenses), so your take-home goal is what's left after setting aside that share of profit. Your real tax depends on your situation.
A counselor wants to take home $80,000 and sets aside 25% for taxes, so the practice needs $106,666.67 of profit. Add $18,000 of expenses (office rent, license renewal and CE, liability insurance, EHR, supervision and marketing) and the year has to bring in $124,666.67. Holding 20 sessions a week for 46 weeks with an 8% no-show and late-cancel rate means 846.4 paid sessions. That's an average of $147.29 per paid session. With 10% of sessions on a sliding scale at 40% off, the average is 96% of the full fee, so the full fee is $147.29 ÷ 0.96 = $153.43.
At a current full fee of $150, the same caseload collects $144 per paid session on average, or $121,881.60 a year. After expenses and the 25% set-aside, that's $77,911.20 of take-home pay, $2,088.80 short of the goal.
Want to track whether your real caseload hits that fee every month? The Private Practice Business System has a Fee & Caseload Calculator tab, plus a session log, income and expenses with a tax set-aside, and a goal planner.
Take it with you
This calculator is a one-off. The Private Practice Business System keeps the same math in Excel and connects it to the rest of your practice.
For private practice
A dashboard, a client roster by ID code, a session log with late-cancel and no-show fees, an insurance claims tracker, income and expenses with a tax set-aside, a fee and caseload calculator, and a goal planner. $39 one-time, no subscription.
Get the Private Practice Business System: $39Today only: $19.50 with code FLASH24
FAQ
Start with the take-home pay you want for the year and gross it up for your tax set-aside, so a $80,000 goal with a 25% set-aside needs about $106,667 of profit. Add your annual business expenses to get the revenue the practice must bring in. Divide that by the sessions you'll actually be paid for (sessions per week times weeks worked, minus no-shows and late cancellations). The result is your required average fee per paid session.
Because an empty hour still uses a slot in your week. If you hold 20 sessions a week and 8% of them are no-shows or late cancellations you don't collect for, you're paid for about 18.4. Leaving that out makes the fee look lower than it needs to be. If you collect a full late-cancel fee every time, you can set the rate to 0%.
Reduced-fee sessions pull your average down, so your full fee has to sit a little higher to keep the same average. If 10% of sessions are at a 40% discount, your average fee is 96% of your full fee (1 minus 10% times 40%), so the full fee is the required average divided by 0.96. Set the sliding-scale share to 0% if you don't offer one.
Only as a reference point. Insurance-paneled rates are set by each payer's contract, not by you, so this calculator is meant for private-pay planning. You can compare the fee it suggests with what your payers reimburse to see which panels cover your costs and goals.
It depends on your income, state, deductions and business structure, so check with a tax professional. Many self-employed clinicians set aside 25% to 30% of profit for self-employment and income tax. Here the set-aside is applied to profit (revenue minus business expenses), and your take-home goal is what's left after it. This is a planning estimate, not tax advice.
Planning estimates only, not tax, financial or legal advice. Insurance-paneled rates are set by payers; this calculator is for private-pay planning. No client information is entered or stored.
