Looking at PPMP
Clinidiary, if you are weighing it against PPMP
A fair account of what PPMP is good at, and then what we do differently — in detail, and only things that exist today. No feature table with our column pre-ticked; you can get that anywhere and it is worth nothing.
What PPMP is good at
An honest description
PPMP is an Australian practice management system from Ivanhoe, Victoria, which its site positions for patient and practice administration, from solo practitioners to multi-disciplinary clinics and national networks. It is offered as a cloud service or installed on-premises, and the site puts most weight on Australian claiming: Medicare and DVA submission, WorkCover Queensland and TAC claiming, and Tyro and HICAPS terminal integration, alongside online booking, SMS reminders, attendance notes with body charts, secure messaging and telehealth. PPMP publishes its prices on its website, tiered by user licences for both deployment options, and names physiotherapists and allied health professionals as its users, with sister products BetterClinics and BetterHQ for other kinds of business.
Who tends to compare the two
A clinic comparing the two is usually an Australian physiotherapy or allied health practice that wants claiming to work the Australian way and is deciding between a paid system with on-premises and cloud options and a free cloud-only one. Practices that submit a lot of WorkCover, TAC, DVA and Medicare claims, or that prefer to keep software on their own server, have clear reasons to weigh PPMP seriously.
We do not run PPMP, so we will not tell you what it cannot do — the people who can answer that are PPMP and the clinic down the road who uses it. Everything below is only about us.
What Clinidiary does differently
Third-party funding is ordinary work
DVA, workers compensation, NDIS and plan-managed billing sit in the same ledger as a private consultation rather than in a bolted-on module. A patient whose sessions are paid by three different parties is a normal Tuesday in an Australian clinic, and the software is shaped around that rather than surprised by it.
Statutory forms come out as the real document
A ReturnToWorkSA physiotherapy management plan is produced as ReturnToWorkSA's own .docx and PDF, with your answers written into the fields of the file they published — not a lookalike we drew that a case manager has to squint at. When the regulator reissues the form, the new one is checked against our field map before it is trusted.
Free, and no card
The whole workspace, not a crippled tier, and no card. Refer a colleague and you earn points every time one joins, with no limit — they sit on your account and do not expire. No lock-in contract and no exit fee.
Your records leave in one click
Full CSV export of patients, appointments, notes and invoices, whenever you want, without asking us and without a fee. Every export is recorded in the audit log. We would rather show you the exit before you sign up than have you discover it does not exist two years in.
Moving your patients across
You can do it yourself
Export your patient list from PPMP as a CSV and load it in Settings → Bring your data. The columns are read from the file's own headings, so you do not have to tell us what shape the export is in or rename anything first.
Nothing is written until you have seen it
The first pass only reads: it shows which columns were recognised, how many patients would be created, and who would be skipped because they are already here. You decide after seeing that, rather than before.
A date it cannot read, it refuses to guess
03/04/1980 is March in one country and April in another. Rather than pick, the import leaves that date blank and tells you the line number. A wrong date of birth decides concession eligibility and which of two same-named patients you have open.
Run both for a fortnight
We would rather you kept PPMP running alongside for the first couple of weeks than trusted a migration on anybody's word, including ours. See what moving involves.
Questions worth asking any vendor
How do I get my data out?
Ask before you sign up, not after. Ours is a CSV export of patients, appointments, notes and invoices, available to you without asking us and without a fee. If the answer involves a support ticket or a quote, that is the answer.
What happens to a note if my internet drops?
In Clinidiary it keeps saving locally and recovers when you come back. It is a dull question until the day it is the only question, which is usually the day somebody loses a consultation.
Can a paid invoice be edited?
Ours cannot. A correction is a credit note plus a replacement, and the original keeps its number and date. Convenient editing of paid invoices is a problem waiting for an audit.
Who is actually building it?
Two people, in a clinic that sees patients. That is a real limitation — we are smaller than everything else on this page — and it is also why the person who fixes a bug is the person who hit it.
Also worth looking at
If you are comparing properly, compare widely. These are the other systems clinics in Australia usually shortlist.
Cliniko
The most widely used allied health system in Australia, known for being simple and calm.
Nookal
Australian-built, strong on multi-practitioner clinics, case management and reporting.
PracSuite
Built for Australian billing — Medicare, DVA and HICAPS as first-class citizens.
Zanda (formerly Power Diary)
Strong client experience — portal, reminders and telehealth — popular with psychology and counselling.