Overview of PatientNow Essentials Integration with Aesthetix CRM

Note: We also offer a PatientNow Pro integration, which is detailed in a separate help article. The two integrations are very similar but have several important differences highlighted throughout this article and in the comparison table at the bottom.

Integration Benefits & Automation

• Opportunity & pipeline automation to decrease manual data entry and drive reporting efficiency

• Supports multiple pipelines for practices that operate both surgical and non-surgical services

• Automate Google review collection after appointments

• Automate post-appointment follow-up

• Automate patient retention campaigns for specific treatment and service types

• Collect data for better patient/client segmentation

• Automated birthday campaigns

• Patient lifetime value tracking from completed orders

• Membership tracking and automation

• Two-way sync to create patients in PatientNow Essentials from Aesthetix CRM

Platform Connection Requirements

• The integration uses AX Connect, a HIPAA-compliant middleware platform that runs all integrations between Aesthetix CRM and your EMR.

• The client must have paid API access with PatientNow, which requires a monthly integration fee of $149/month paid directly to PatientNow.

• Aesthetix CRM does not collect any additional integration fee and completely sets up the integration for you.

How the Integration Works

This is a two-way sync between PatientNow Essentials and Aesthetix CRM utilizing PatientNow webhooks and Aesthetix CRM actions. Webhooks enable near-instantaneous updates, typically within 15 to 30 seconds of the action being taken in PatientNow Essentials.

PatientNow Essentials is primarily used by medical spas and wellness clinics, though some plastic surgery practices also use it. For med spa-only practices, the integration works with the non-surgical lead-to-patient pipeline. For plastic surgery practices, we also utilize the lead-to-surgery-completed pipeline with appointment categorization.

Note on shared custom fields: PatientNow Essentials and PatientNow Pro share the same custom fields in Aesthetix CRM. You may see fields like PNOW Appointment Comments, PNOW Appointment Reason, or PNOW Event Type in your account -- these are specific to the PatientNow Pro integration and are not actively used by the Essentials integration in most cases.

Webhook Triggers & Workflow Details

1. New Patient Created

What triggers it: A new patient is created in PatientNow Essentials.

What happens:

• We immediately create or update the contact in Aesthetix CRM with core contact information.

• If the patient already exists in Aesthetix CRM, we simply update their existing record.

Fields updated in Aesthetix CRM:

• First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone

• PNOW ID

• PNOW Initial Visit (date of initial visit, if it exists -- this field is Essentials-only)

• PNOW Location

Best practice: Include both a mobile phone number and email address when adding a new client in PatientNow Essentials to ensure a complete sync.

2. Patient Updated

What triggers it: Any update to a patient record in PatientNow Essentials.

What happens:

• We bring in the updated information and update the contact in Aesthetix CRM.

• No workflow is triggered -- this simply keeps the contact record in sync.

Fields updated in Aesthetix CRM:

• First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone

• PNOW ID

• PNOW Initial Visit

• PNOW Location

3. New Appointment Booked

What triggers it: A new appointment is created in PatientNow Essentials (by staff or via online booking).

What happens:

• We receive the webhook and format the appointment date for the Next Visit Date field.

• We pull customer and patient details from PatientNow Essentials.

• We format the phone number and gender for our system.

• We pull the initial visit date (if available) and location information.

• For plastic surgery practices: We perform appointment categorization to classify the appointment type into the correct category for dual-pipeline routing.

• We create or update the contact in Aesthetix CRM and add them to the PatientNow Appointments Update workflow.

Fields updated in Aesthetix CRM:

• First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone

• Next Visit Date

• Next Visit Service

• Appointment Category (for plastic surgery practices only)

• PNOW ID

• PNOW Initial Visit

• PNOW Last Appointment ID

• PNOW Location

• PNOW Primary Employee (provider)

Important: For PatientNow Essentials, Next Visit Service and Next Visit Date are the primary fields for seeing what service was booked and when. The Pro-specific fields like PNOW Event Type and PNOW Appointment Reason are not used in the Essentials integration.

Workflow actions in Aesthetix CRM (Med Spa / Non-Surgical):

• A contact note is added with appointment details for your audit trail.

• If the appointment status is Booked, the opportunity moves to the Booked stage.

• If the appointment status is Checked Out, the opportunity moves to the Patient stage.

• If the appointment status is No-Show, the opportunity moves to the Cancelled/No-Show stage.

• Once a contact moves to Booked, they are automatically unenrolled from lead nurturing automations (email/SMS drips), preventing redundant follow-ups.

Workflow actions in Aesthetix CRM (Plastic Surgery):

• For plastic surgery practices, the same appointment categorization and dual-pipeline logic from PatientNow Pro applies. See the Appointment Categorization section below for full pipeline mapping.

4. Appointment Status Update

What triggers it: An appointment status changes in PatientNow Essentials. Key statuses are: Booked, Checked Out, and No-Show.

What happens:

• We pull customer details, appointment date, phone, gender, and location information.

• For plastic surgery practices, we update the appointment category.

• We update the contact and add them to the PatientNow Appointments Update workflow for pipeline movement.

Fields updated in Aesthetix CRM:

• PNOW ID

• PNOW Location

• PNOW Appointment Status

• Appointment Category (for plastic surgery practices only)

⚠ Key Differences from PatientNow Pro:

No-show statuses arrive in batch around midnight. Unlike Pro where statuses are immediate, PatientNow Essentials sends no-show statuses all at once, typically around midnight. This means no-show pipeline updates will not be immediate -- they will process overnight.

Cancelled does not exist as a status in PatientNow Essentials. We cannot move contacts to a cancelled stage based on appointment status because PatientNow Essentials does not send a cancellation status. This is a platform limitation, not an integration limitation.

Next Visit Date and Next Visit Service are not updated on appointment status changes -- only on new appointment bookings.

5. New Order (Checkout / Payment)

What triggers it: An order is completed (checkout process) in PatientNow Essentials. This includes all services, memberships, gift cards, and any other transactions processed through the sales register.

What happens:

• We receive the webhook when the checkout is completed and you navigate away from the sales register screen.

• We pull customer details, format phone and gender, and get location information.

• We update the contact in Aesthetix CRM with the invoice amount, last visit information, and order details.

• The contact is added to the PatientNow Order Paid workflow.

Fields updated in Aesthetix CRM:

• First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone

• Invoice Paid Amount

• Last Visit Date

• Last Visit Service

• PNOW Last Order ID

• PNOW Location

Workflow actions in Aesthetix CRM:

• A contact note is added with the order total, line items, and order ID.

• The Invoice Paid Amount is added to Patient Lifetime Value via a math function.

• The opportunity value is updated to reflect the actual amount paid -- enabling accurate ROI and revenue reporting.

• For plastic surgery practices, the workflow checks whether the order is surgical or non-surgical and applies the invoice amount to the correct pipeline's opportunity.

• The contact is added to the Birthday workflow (see Birthday Field Sync section below).

Rebooking logic: If a patient is rebooked during checkout, their opportunity will automatically move back to the Booked stage, keeping your pipeline aligned with real-time actions.

6. Membership Orders

What triggers it: A membership is purchased through the checkout/order process in PatientNow Essentials.

Note: Unlike PatientNow Pro (which has a dedicated membership webhook), PatientNow Essentials processes memberships through the same order trigger. Membership data is captured as part of the checkout flow.

Fields updated in Aesthetix CRM:

• PNOW Membership ID

• PNOW Membership Program Name

• PNOW Membership Amount

• PNOW Membership Sold Date

Workflow actions in Aesthetix CRM:

• A Membership tag is added to the contact.

• The membership amount is added to Patient Lifetime Value and the opportunity value.

• For recurring memberships, the opportunity value is updated monthly as each order is processed.

Customization Available: You can use the Membership tag as a trigger in your own workflows to send automated communications -- for example, a thank-you SMS to the client or a notification to your team when a membership is sold.

7. Create Patient in PatientNow Essentials (Two-Way Sync)

What triggers it: A tag called pnow-create is added to a contact in Aesthetix CRM (either manually or via automation).

What happens:

• The tag triggers a workflow in AX Connect that sends a create patient request to PatientNow Essentials.

• The patient is typically created within 15 to 30 seconds.

Required fields in Aesthetix CRM:

• First Name

• Last Name

• Email

• Phone

Recommendation: While the integration can be set to push contacts automatically, it's typically recommended to send them manually (by adding the tag yourself) to avoid cluttering PatientNow with spam or unqualified leads.

Common reasons for errors:

• Missing required fields (first name, last name, email, or phone)

• The patient already exists in PatientNow Essentials (the system will not create a duplicate)

Appointment Categorization & Pipeline Logic (Plastic Surgery)

For plastic surgery practices using PatientNow Essentials with dual pipelines, the integration uses the same appointment categorization system as PatientNow Pro.

Pipeline Movement -- Surgical Pipeline

Pipeline Movement -- Non-Surgical Pipeline

Med Spa Pipeline (Non-Surgical Only)

For med spa and wellness practices without a surgical pipeline, the logic is straightforward:

Patient vs. Lead Logic

• Existing patients maintain a single "won" status throughout the pipeline as they move between stages.

• New leads keep an open status until they check out, at which point they're moved to the Patient stage.

Birthday Field Sync

Aesthetix CRM (GoHighLevel) does not currently expose the native Date of Birth field via API. To work around this, we create a custom field called PNOW DOB and bring in the birthday data from PatientNow Essentials into that field.

A dedicated Birthday workflow then copies the value from the PNOW DOB custom field into the native Date of Birth field, keeping them in sync. This ensures that any birthday automations you've built in the CRM will work correctly using data from PatientNow Essentials.

The Birthday workflow is triggered when a contact enters the Order Paid workflow.

Hidden / Locked Workflows

Several workflows in your Aesthetix CRM account are hidden and locked. This is intentional -- these workflows contain the core integration logic, and modifications could break the integration. The locked workflows include:

• PatientNow Appointments Update

• PatientNow Order Paid

• PatientNow Birthday

If you need custom automation built on top of any of these, let us know and we can either unlock specific workflows or help you build triggers off of the tags and fields these workflows create.

Contact & Opportunity Custom Fields

All PatientNow-specific fields are organized in a PatientNow folder within your custom fields. These fields are shared between PatientNow Essentials and PatientNow Pro integrations.

Note: You may also see fields like PNOW Appointment Comments, PNOW Appointment Reason, and PNOW Event Type in your account. These are specific to the PatientNow Pro integration and are not actively used by the Essentials integration.

In addition to the PatientNow-specific fields above, the integration also updates these standard Aesthetix CRM fields:

• Next Visit Date (on new appointment bookings)

• Next Visit Service (on new appointment bookings)

• Last Visit Date (on order checkout)

• Last Visit Service (on order checkout)

• Invoice Paid Amount

• Patient Lifetime Value

• Appointment Category (for plastic surgery practices)

• Gender

• Contact Type

• First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone

Important Notes & Limitations

1. Cancelled does not exist as a status. PatientNow Essentials does not send a cancellation appointment status. We cannot automatically move contacts to a cancelled pipeline stage based on appointment status. This is a platform limitation.

2. No-show statuses arrive overnight. Unlike Pro where statuses update immediately, PatientNow Essentials sends no-show statuses in batch around midnight. Pipeline updates for no-shows will process overnight, not in real time.

3. Last Visit Date and Last Visit Service come from the order, not the appointment. The checkout/order trigger is what updates these fields, not the appointment status update. If a patient checks in but doesn't complete checkout, Last Visit information won't update.

4. Next Visit Service is your primary field for booked service info. The Pro-specific fields (PNOW Event Type, PNOW Appointment Reason, PNOW Appointment Comments) are not used in the Essentials integration.

5. PNOW Initial Visit is Essentials-only. This custom field is not used in the PatientNow Pro integration.

6. Birthday requires a workaround. GoHighLevel's native Date of Birth field isn't accessible via API, so we use the PNOW DOB custom field and a sync workflow to keep them aligned.

7. Memberships come through the order trigger. Unlike Pro (which has a dedicated membership webhook), Essentials processes memberships as part of the checkout flow. Recurring memberships update the opportunity value monthly.

8. Shared custom fields with Pro. Some Pro-specific fields will appear in your account but are not actively used by the Essentials integration.

PatientNow Essentials vs. Pro: Key Differences

FAQ

Q: How do I know if the integration received an appointment?

Check the contact's Notes tab. Every appointment event generates a note with appointment details. If there's no note, we didn't receive the event.

Q: Why didn't a cancelled appointment move the contact to the Cancelled stage?

PatientNow Essentials does not have a cancelled appointment status. This is a platform limitation -- we cannot move contacts based on a status that doesn't exist in the system.

Q: Why didn't a no-show update show up immediately?

PatientNow Essentials sends no-show statuses in batch around midnight. The pipeline update will process overnight, not in real time.

Q: Why doesn't the Last Visit Service field update when an appointment is booked?

Last Visit Service and Last Visit Date are updated from the order/checkout trigger, not the appointment booking trigger. The appointment booking updates Next Visit Date and Next Visit Service instead.

Q: Can I build custom automations off the integration?

Yes. You can use the tags added by our workflows (e.g., Membership) as triggers for your own workflows. You can also trigger automations off custom field changes. If you need a locked workflow unlocked, contact us.

Q: Why do I see Pro-specific fields in my account?

PatientNow Essentials and Pro share the same custom fields. Fields like PNOW Appointment Comments, PNOW Appointment Reason, and PNOW Event Type are from the Pro integration and are not actively used in Essentials.

Q: How do recurring memberships work?

When a recurring membership processes each month, a new order is created in PatientNow Essentials. This triggers the order workflow, which adds the monthly amount to the Patient Lifetime Value and updates the opportunity value accordingly.

Q: Should I set up automatic patient creation or manual?

We typically recommend manual (adding the pnow-create tag yourself) to avoid pushing spam or unqualified leads into PatientNow. Automatic creation is available if you prefer, but discuss with your Aesthetix CRM team first.