Seans — a money tracker for therapists

The problem

A therapist with twenty weekly clients is also running a small business. Sessions repeat on a schedule but shift constantly. Some clients pay in cash, some by transfer, some late, some partly. Rent, supervision and the accountant come due whether or not anyone paid this week.

That reality usually ends up in a spreadsheet — one that works, but only because its owner remembers every rule inside it. The interesting question was which of those rules matter enough to keep, and which exist only because a spreadsheet cannot do better.

Four ideas the app is built on

One glance

A single headline number answers “how is this month going?” before you have finished picking up the phone. Everything else is subordinate to it.

Marking, not data entry

Recording a day of sessions is a few taps on the sessions themselves. No forms, no dialogs, no navigating somewhere else first.

Nothing falls through

Unpaid and unmarked items from earlier months stay visible until they are resolved, and money that arrives late is credited to the month it lands in.

The calendar maintains itself

Months build from each client's usual slot. Changing a schedule updates the future without ever touching what already happened.

The app

Today screen showing the day's sessions with status chips — Today — the landing screen. Mark a session in one tap.

Summary screen with a large headline figure and income breakdown — Summary — the month in one number, then the workings.

Week view of the calendar with a day strip and session list — Calendar — week view, the everyday workhorse.

Client list showing initials, slots and outstanding amounts — Clients — slots, fees and what each one owes.

All figures and initials shown are fictional demo data.

Decisions worth naming

Initials only, structurally. Clients are stored as initials — the entry field accepts single letters and nothing else, so a full name cannot be typed in even by accident. Couples and families have their own shorthand.

History is immutable. Raising a fee changes what future sessions cost, never what past ones did. Prices are stamped on the session when it is created.

Estimates never masquerade as facts. Tax and commission are calculated and shown, but stay out of every total until the therapist records what they actually paid — the app cannot know when those bills are settled.

Cancelled and charged are different things. A late cancellation the therapist charges for is money owed; a free one is not. The distinction is one tap, and the totals follow it.

It works with no network. One file, no accounts, no server. Data lives on the device and leaves only as a backup file the owner chooses to make.

Design direction

Retro-OS minimal: warm cream surfaces, thin ink outlines, hard offset shadows with no blur, and chunky controls that are easy to hit — but with modern spacing and hierarchy. Colour carries meaning rather than decoration: every hue below is a payment state, which is why nothing else is allowed to use them.

paid pending cancelled selected surface ink

The money side of a therapy practice.