A patient walks in eight months after buying a six-session laser package. She has used two sessions. She wants the other four now, at the price she paid, with a doctor who has since left. Or she wants her money back. Your front desk has no written rule to point to, so the decision lands on you at 6:40 on a Saturday evening with three patients still waiting.
Every skin clinic that sells courses ends up here sooner or later. The cause is rarely the patient. It is almost always a package that was priced at the counter, sold with a verbal promise, and never given a written beginning, middle and end.
Why package pricing goes wrong
A package is three decisions bundled into one price: how much discount you give for committing up front, how long the commitment lasts, and what happens if the patient stops partway. Too often, only the first one gets decided. The discount gets agreed because it closes the sale. The other two get decided later, case by case, by whoever is at reception that day.
That creates two problems. First, the clinic is holding money for work it still owes, with no date on which that obligation ends. Second, every unused-session conversation becomes a negotiation, and negotiations at the front desk produce inconsistent answers. One patient gets an extension, the next is refused, and the two of them know each other.
The fix is not a cleverer price. It is a short written policy that answers all three questions before money changes hands.
The math: an illustrative six-session course
Take a two-doctor skin clinic that charges ₹4,000 for a single laser session in this example. Six sessions bought one at a time would come to ₹24,000 in this example.
Say the clinic sells the six-session package for ₹20,000 in this illustration, which is a discount of roughly 17% on the per-session price in this example. That discount is the patient's reward for paying up front and committing to the full course. It is also the number that matters most when a patient stops early.
Now suppose the patient completes two sessions and asks for a refund. There are two ways to calculate it:
- Pro-rata on the package price: two of six sessions used, so in this example the clinic keeps about ₹6,667 and refunds about ₹13,333. The patient got the full-course discount without completing the course.
- Sessions used at the single-session price: in this example two sessions at ₹4,000 means ₹8,000 consumed, so ₹12,000 comes back. The discount only applies to patients who finish, which is what it was for.
Neither method is the only fair one. What matters is that you pick one, write it down, and tell the patient before they pay. A gap of ₹1,333 in this example is small. The argument over it, with no written rule, is not.
Deciding the validity window
A validity period puts an end date on what the clinic owes. Without one, a package sold this year can be redeemed whenever the patient remembers it, at whatever your costs are by then.
Set the window from the treatment plan, not from a round number. The spacing between sessions is a clinical decision for the treating doctor, so start there. If, in this example, the doctor plans sessions four weeks apart, a six-session course runs about five months; a validity of eight or nine months in this example leaves room for a missed appointment, a holiday or a clinical pause without making the window open-ended.
Peels and other shorter courses get their own windows, worked out the same way. Do not copy the laser validity onto everything because it is easier to remember.
Then decide the edge cases in advance:
- Doctor-advised pauses. If the treating doctor stops the course for a clinical reason, does the validity clock stop too? If your answer is yes, write down who records the pause.
- Extensions on request. Allowed once, for a fixed period, with or without a fee? Decide it, and decide who can approve it. One person, not whoever is on the desk.
- Transfers. Can unused sessions move to a family member, or be swapped for a different procedure? If yes, at what value: the package rate or the single-session rate?
- Missed appointments. Does a no-show without notice count as a used session, or just as a missed slot? Pick one and be consistent.
What happens at expiry
This is the clause clinics most often leave vague, because it is uncomfortable to write. Decide which of these applies when a package reaches its end date with sessions unused:
- The unused sessions lapse.
- The unused sessions convert to a credit the patient can use on other services, for a limited time.
- The patient can claim a refund calculated by your chosen method, minus a stated administration charge if you apply one.
Whatever you pick, two things make it hold up. The rule must be in writing and shown to the patient at the point of sale, not produced afterwards. And someone should contact the patient before expiry, so the end date never comes as a surprise. Whether your terms are reasonable where you practise is a question for your lawyer, not your receptionist; write them so a patient can read them in under a minute.
What to do this week
- List every package you sell. Procedure, number of sessions, package price and single-session price, on one sheet.
- Choose your refund method and apply it to every package, not just lasers.
- Set a validity window per package from the treating doctor's planned spacing plus a buffer.
- Write the edge cases: pauses, extensions, transfers, no-shows, expiry. One line each.
- Put the policy where the patient sees it before paying: printed on the package receipt or a one-page sheet they sign or acknowledge.
- Name one approver for exceptions. Log every exception so you can see if the policy needs changing.
- Run a monthly check of open packages: who has sessions left, and whose packages expire in the next thirty days.
On tax: a package can bundle a consultation, a procedure and sometimes a take-home product, and these lines can be treated differently. How an advance payment, a refund or a lapsed package is handled for GST is not something to guess at. Confirm the treatment with your CA before you print the new terms.
Where a system helps
All of this works on paper or in a spreadsheet, as long as someone keeps it current. The weak point is the monthly check: open packages and approaching expiry dates are tedious to pull by hand, so the check quietly stops. In MyCliniCore, a treatment package is sold as a course with an expiry date, sessions are deducted during the consultation, the prepaid sessions still owed show on a dashboard tile and in a report, and a package can be refunded or voided when your policy says so. You can see the rest on the features page.
If you run a skin or dermatology clinic and sell laser or peel packages, we'd like to hear how you handle this today. MyCliniCore is in early access for skin clinics and is priced per doctor; the team sets it up with you around your own package rules. If that sounds useful, tell us about your clinic.