Capture a patient's Medicare bulk-billing assignment ("I agree to assign my benefit") electronically — on the patient's own phone or on a screen in your practice — so a bulk-billed visit doesn't need a paper signature at reception.
Capture a patient's Medicare bulk-billing assignment ("I agree to assign my benefit") electronically — on the patient's own phone or on a screen in your practice — so a bulk-billed visit doesn't need a paper signature at reception.
From 1 July 2027, a verbal assignment is no longer enough: a bulk-billed service needs the patient's electronic or physical signature. Your Booking handles the electronic path end to end.
Key points:
A patient can sign in several ways — all produce the same signed PDF:
If you don't bulk-bill routinely, you can switch off the two patient-facing ways — the manage page and the booking-confirmed page — and keep the kiosk and the staff bulk-billing link. See step 3 below.
On the agreement screen the patient checks their details, confirms who is signing (themselves, or a parent/guardian — a parent or guardian is required for patients under 13), and taps I Agree.
When a patient signs, a note is usually added to the appointment in your practice software (an [AoB] marker) so your team can see it's done. That note isn't guaranteed to stick — your practice software can occasionally overwrite it — so the reliable record is always Your Booking's own staff dashboard, which shows every completed agreement.
Three things need to be in place:
In the admin, open the Optometrists section (the same place you set their booking photos). Enter each optometrist's Medicare provider number and save. A note appears against any optometrist still missing one.
Provider numbers are location-specific. For a multi-branch practice, set the number for each branch the optometrist works at.
When you switch it on, Your Booking first checks it has the access it needs. If something's missing it won't enable, and it'll tell you what to fix.
Depending on your practice software:
Not sure how to enable the access? Send us a message and we'll walk you through it.
Under the main switch is Offer it to patients online. It's on to start with, which suits a practice that bulk-bills as a matter of course: every patient sees the form on their manage page and straight after booking.
Turn it off if you only bulk-bill some patients. The form then appears when your team decides it should — on the kiosk, or through the bulk-billing link on the staff dashboard's Appointments tab — and patients aren't asked unprompted.
Everything else is unchanged either way: the same form, the same signed PDF, the same record in your dashboard.
So patients aren't asked twice, switch off Optomate's built-in assignment screen:
In Optomate, go to System Settings → Settings, find "Suppress AoB Confirmation and Audit", and turn it ON.
Your Booking then handles both the before-visit and after-visit assignment. (Sunix has no equivalent setting — skip this step.)
A kiosk is any touch screen you keep in the practice — an iPad or other tablet, or a touch-screen laptop — that staff can push the agreement to, so the patient signs without coming to reception. It just needs a web browser and internet.
?kiosk on the end of the address (e.g. https://yourpractice.yourbooking.au/?kiosk).You can also set a screen up for bookings only (skip the code) if you just want a self-service booking kiosk.
Lock the screen to the booking page so patients can't wander off to other apps or websites:
Running more than one kiosk? Give each screen a name so staff can tell them apart. You can either add it to the address — ?kiosk=Reception, ?kiosk=Room 2, instead of plain ?kiosk — or just type it into the "Screen name" box on the kiosk's setup screen. Pair each one with the code as usual. Then, when staff tap Kiosk and more than one screen is connected, they get a quick pop-up to choose which screen to send the form to. With a single kiosk, it goes straight there — no prompt.
Adding the kiosk to the home screen as an app? Add it first, then open the home-screen icon and pair from there. An installed app doesn't share the browser's settings, so a pairing done in the browser doesn't carry over. Name it on the setup screen rather than in the address — that's the only place the name will stick for an installed app. (Press and hold the welcome-screen header to re-open setup if you need to.)
Already set a screen up for bookings only and now want it to receive bulk-billing forms? On the kiosk's welcome screen, press and hold the practice name/logo for about two seconds — the setup screen reappears so you can enter the pairing code. The same gesture lets you re-pair a screen after you've regenerated the code.
Regenerating the code (in the kiosk card) un-pairs every screen — only do it if a code has leaked. Keep the code private otherwise.
Add the {AOB_PROMPT} placeholder to a reminder or manage-link template. It adds "…or sign your Medicare form" to the message only when that patient still needs to sign, and nothing when they've already signed or it doesn't apply. Put it at the end of the sentence, e.g.:
Tap {APPT_LINK} to reschedule, cancel{AOB_PROMPT}.The placeholder shows up in the template editor automatically once the feature is on. It's not offered — and stops adding anything to your messages — when Offer it to patients online is off, because it sends patients to a form their manage page no longer shows. See the Reminders setup guide for how to edit templates.
When your team sends a patient the bulk-billing link, the message comes from a template you can edit — one for SMS, one for email. Both are created for you when you turn the feature on, so there's nothing to do unless you want to change the wording.
To edit them, go to Messaging → Templates and find the Bulk-billing links group. Keep the {AOB_URL} placeholder in the message — that's the link the patient taps, and the message is no use without it. You can use the usual placeholders alongside it, like {PATIENT_FIRST_NAME} and {PRACTICE_NAME}.
If you write more than one, choose which is used by default under Default templates for staff sends on the Medicare assignment of benefit digital signing card (Setup → Features). There's a choice for SMS and one for email; the channel is picked from the patient's contact preference. Sending by SMS needs the Recalls & Reminders module; without it, the patient needs an email address. Your team can still pick a different template for an individual patient at the moment they send it.
The link in a text message is kept short deliberately, so the message usually fits in a single SMS.
On the staff dashboard's Appointments tab, the Bulk Billing column shows whether each patient has signed (✓ Signed), and when relevant:
The agreement wording follows the Services Australia Assignment of Benefit form. This guide is here to help you set the feature up — it is not legal or Medicare-billing advice. You remain responsible for your practice's bulk-billing. If you have specific questions, check with Services Australia or your professional association.
You can switch the feature off any time on the Medicare assignment of benefit digital signing card in Setup → Features. No new agreements will be offered to patients, and any PDFs already signed and saved at your practice stay exactly where they are.