Admin Role and Acting on Behalf of Providers

How the Admin role works in PracticeRunner, including delegated provider access for scheduling, billing, settings, reminders, portal setup, and other provider-specific workflows.

Admin role and provider delegation

The Admin role is for staff who help run the practice but do not carry clinical responsibility for clients. Admins can support scheduling, billing, Conversations triage, client setup, reminders, forms, portal configuration, and other operational work.

Admins are different from clinicians. They do not appear as clinical providers in appointment, client, scheduler, or billing provider lists, and clients cannot be assigned to an Admin as their provider.

What admins can do

Depending on the practice plan and organization settings, admins can help with:

scheduling and appointment changes
client records and contact details
billing, invoices, superbills, statements, and payment follow-up
Conversations, inquiries, reminders, and secure-message workflows
intake setup and form sending
practice settings that owners allow admins to manage
provider-specific operational settings when acting on behalf of a provider

Admins should be used for operational support, not for clinical ownership of care.

Acting on behalf of a provider

Owners and authorized admins can use Act as Provider to temporarily work in the app on behalf of a clinician in the same practice.

When delegated mode is active, PracticeRunner shows a banner with the selected provider. Operational screens behave as if that provider is the active provider, while the logged-in admin remains the real signed-in user.

This helps admins configure or complete provider-specific work without asking the clinician to sign in and make every change themselves.

Common delegated workflows include:

provider profile settings
provider availability and client scheduler settings
scheduling and calendar work
billing and invoice workflows for the provider
portal and reminder configuration
intake and form workflows
telehealth and location defaults
provider-specific operational preferences

When a practice uses associate supervision, admins can help configure provider-level supervision, case/client-level supervision, and appointment-level overrides while acting on behalf of an authorized provider. Appointment-level overrides are intended for specific sessions and are available only when the appointment can already inherit a case/client-level or provider-level supervisor.

What delegation does not change

Acting on behalf of a provider is not the same as logging in as that provider.

PracticeRunner preserves both:

the admin who performed the action
the provider the action was performed for

Sensitive identity and security areas remain tied to the real signed-in user. Delegated mode should not silently take over:

passwords or sign-in methods
passkeys
MFA or recovery settings
OAuth or social login identity
personal account-security changes

If an admin needs to review security status, they may be able to view limited account-security information, but changes to personal sign-in credentials should remain self-managed unless the practice has an explicit recovery workflow.

Audit trail

Delegated actions are recorded so the practice can see what happened and who did it.

For example, the activity log can distinguish between:

the admin who updated a setting
the provider whose setting was updated
the organization where the action occurred
the type of change and the related record

PracticeRunner avoids logging secrets such as passwords, tokens, or private credential values.

When to use admins instead of clinician seats

Use an Admin role for schedulers, billers, practice coordinators, intake staff, or other non-clinical support staff.

Use a Provider, Associate, or Owner role when the person has clinical responsibility, needs to be assigned to clients, should appear in provider lists, or should be available through the public scheduler.