Visits per Client

Understanding the Visits / Client Metric

What is Visits / Client?

Visits / Client is one of theBOS's core engagement metrics. It tells you, on average, how many times each unique client attended during the selected period.

The calculation is simple:

Total invoiced attendances ÷ Unique clients = Visits / Client

Example

If your clinic had 25 invoiced attendances last week across 10 unique clients, then:

25 ÷ 10 = 2.5 visits per client

That means, on average, each client came in 2.5 times that week.

The "Ghost" Value (Second Number)

You'll often see a second, slightly different number next to Visits / Client. This is the ghost value.

Main value — counts only attendances that have been invoiced.
Ghost value — counts all non-cancelled attendances, including ones that haven't been invoiced yet.

The ghost value is helpful for spotting cases where appointments have happened but haven't been billed, which can affect your reported numbers until invoicing catches up.

Visits / Client vs. Visits / Client (direct)

theBOS exposes two versions of this metric. They look almost identical but attribute visits to practitioners in different ways. Knowing which one you're reading is the single most common reason numbers seem "off".

Visits / Client (the default)

This is the assigned-practitioner view. You'll see a small badge on the row labelled "Assigned Practitioner" Metric.

For each client, every visit in the period is attributed to the practitioner that client was assigned to for that interval (weekly or monthly, depending on your assignment cadence) — regardless of who physically delivered the visit.

Filtering by Practitioner Joe shows all visits by Joe's assigned clients, even ones delivered by a colleague covering for him.
A client who switches assigned practitioner mid-period contributes their visits to whichever practitioner was assigned in that interval.
This is the right metric for caseload / client-base questions: "How engaged is Joe's panel of clients?"

Visits / Client (direct)

This is the delivered-by view. No assignment lookup — visits are attributed to the practitioner who actually saw the client.

Filtering by Practitioner Joe shows only the visits Joe personally delivered and the unique clients Joe personally saw.
Cover sessions count toward the covering clinician, not the assigned one.
This is the right metric for clinician activity / productivity questions: "How frequently is Joe seeing the clients in front of him?"

Why this matters for audits

When the main Visits / Client seems lower than a Nookal cross-check suggests, it's usually because:

The clinician you're looking at has covered visits for someone else — those visits live under the assigned practitioner, not the cover clinician.
A client's assigned practitioner changed during the period — their visits split across two practitioners' rows.
Clients on the report don't have an assigned practitioner at all for that interval — they may be excluded from per-practitioner breakdowns.

If you want a raw "did this clinician do these visits?" check, look at Visits / Client (direct) — that should line up directly with the Nookal booking list for the same clinician and date range.

Why Does the Number Get Bigger as You "Zoom Out"?

This is the most common source of confusion, and it's actually expected behaviour — not a bug.

Across practitioners

Imagine one client sees 3 different practitioners, one time each.

For Practitioner A: 1 visit ÷ 1 client = 1.0
For Practitioner B: 1 visit ÷ 1 client = 1.0
For Practitioner C: 1 visit ÷ 1 client = 1.0
For All practitioners combined: 3 visits ÷ 1 client = 3.0

The client only counts once at the aggregated level, but their attendances are summed across all practitioners. So the stream-level value can legitimately be higher than any individual clinician-level value.

Across time periods

The same logic applies to date ranges:

Daily — almost impossible to exceed 1.0 (most clients only attend once on a given day).
Weekly — typically 1.0–1.5.
Monthly — higher again.
Yearly — much higher, because repeat visits across the year all roll up to the same unique client.

The longer the period, the more repeat visits accumulate per unique client.

How to Investigate a Specific Number

If a value still looks wrong, the best troubleshooting approach is to narrow the slice as much as possible:

Instead of looking at company-wide Visits / Client for the year, look at one location × one practitioner × one week.

At that resolution, any discrepancy is usually easy to spot — a missing invoice, an attendance attributed to the wrong practitioner, or a client record that hasn't synced. Once you've found the cause at the small slice, the same explanation will usually account for the variance at the larger aggregated levels.

Quick Reference

Question	Answer
What counts as a "visit"?	An invoiced attendance (or any non-cancelled attendance, for the ghost value).
What counts as a "client"?	A unique client in the selected slice — counted once, regardless of how many times they attended.
What's the difference between the two variants?	Visits / Client attributes visits to the client's assigned practitioner. Visits / Client (direct) attributes to whoever actually delivered the visit.
Why is the "All" total higher than any single practitioner?	Clients seen by multiple practitioners count once at the aggregated level but contribute attendances to each practitioner.
Why is the yearly figure so much higher than the weekly one?	Repeat visits across a longer period stack up on the same unique client.
How do I check a specific number?	Click the metric to open the attendance drill-down popup.
What's the best way to report a suspected discrepancy?	Narrow to the smallest slice (one location, one practitioner, one week) and share that example.
Which variant should I use for cross-checking against Nookal?	Visits / Client (direct) — it matches the actual booking list. The main metric can legitimately differ when cover sessions or assignment changes are involved.