Clinic App vs Cliniko: one system, built around AHPRA rules

For a cosmetic or skin clinic, Clinic App is the stronger fit for two reasons: it runs the whole clinic in one system, and it is built around Australia's AHPRA and TGA advertising rules. Cliniko is well regarded practice software for clinics and allied health practitioners, at its best on detailed treatment notes. Clinic App puts bookings, checkout, memberships, packages, gift vouchers, rewards, consent and treatment records on one patient record, and keeps rewards and offers off prescription treatments. Both store a new Australian clinic's data in Australia.

Cliniko is well regarded practice software, and its own site says practitioners trust it with millions of confidential client records every day. This page sets out what each system is built to do, where they overlap, and how to tell which one fits the way your clinic actually makes money. Every claim about Cliniko below links to Cliniko's own website or help centre, checked on 29 October 2026.

What does Cliniko do well?

Cliniko describes itself as practice management software for clinics and allied health practitioners. That is a fair summary. It is a mature, well regarded system, and it does a lot out of the box.

• Clinical notes. Its health records features include fully customisable treatment note templates, body charts, medical alerts, draft notes, permissions that stop practitioners seeing each other's notes, and export of treatment notes to PDF.
• Patient forms. Patient forms can go out before an appointment, and patients can sign them from their own device.
• The calendar. The booking and scheduling page lists automated appointment reminders, a wait list, repeat appointments, group and class bookings, telehealth, online cancellations and automated follow-up messages, which can go out weeks, months or a year after a visit, including to patients who have not rebooked.
• Online booking and payments. Online bookings embed in most websites with a line of code, with no username or password for the patient. Online payments run through Stripe: patients can pay when they book, and staff can send payment links by email, SMS or QR code.
• Products and finance. The finance page covers invoicing, product sales with barcodes, stock levels, expenses and a Xero integration.
• Security. Cliniko's security page says new accounts based in Australia have their data stored in Australia, encrypted with AES-256 and backed up daily, with two-factor sign-in available.

Its pricing page is just as plain. The price steps up with the number of practitioners, every plan includes every feature, admin and reception users are unlimited, and SMS is paid as pre-purchased credits per message. There is a 30-day free trial, no upfront cost, free data migration, and you can cancel any time. We have left the dollar figures out, because they are set by tier and can change; check the page for today's numbers.

If your clinic's work is mostly assessments, treatment notes and appointments, Cliniko does that job very well.

What is Clinic App built to do differently?

Clinic App is one system for cosmetic and skin clinics. It was built inside working Australian cosmetic clinics, front desk first. It covers the same daily ground as a practice system, then goes further on the part of a cosmetic clinic's income that comes from patients coming back.

• Running the day: diary and online booking, deposits and cards on file, front desk checkout and payments, reminders, waitlist, rosters, multi-location, stock and reports.
• The clinical side: consent forms and intake, plus treatment records and photos.
• Repeat revenue: memberships with monthly billing, packages, gift vouchers, rewards and points, a prepaid wallet, referrals and review requests.
• Data and payments: patient data is hosted in Sydney, Australia. Card payments go through Stripe, and Clinic App never stores card numbers.

Clinic App is Australian owned and based on the Gold Coast, Queensland. It charges flat fees, with no setup fee, no per-seat fee and no lock-in. For the wider picture of what one system should cover, see our guide to all-in-one clinic software.

What changes when everything is in one system?

In one system, the patient's membership, packages, vouchers, rewards, consent and treatment records sit on the same record as their bookings and payments, so nothing is copied between tools. On Cliniko, gift vouchers run through a connected app, VaocherApp, rather than Cliniko itself, according to its gift voucher help article and VaocherApp listing. Memberships with monthly billing and rewards are not listed on Cliniko's features pages, so a cosmetic clinic that sells them would need another tool for them.

In Clinic App, the front desk checks out a visit, takes the membership payment, redeems a voucher and checks the consent form in the same place. One login for the team, one bill for the owner, and one record per patient.

Which one is built for AHPRA and TGA rules?

Clinic App is built around the rules an Australian cosmetic clinic advertises and treats under, so the safe way to do something is the default.

Those rules come from two regulators. The TGA says prescription-only medicines must not be advertised to the public: see its guidance on complying with the restrictions on advertising prescription medicines to the public. AHPRA's guidelines for advertising a regulated health service prohibit testimonials, and its guidelines for advertising higher risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures warn that inducements are used extensively to influence consumer choice. Its guidelines for performing non-surgical cosmetic procedures say a patient's consent must be documented.

Here is how Clinic App builds those rules in:

• Rewards stay off prescription treatments. Points, rewards, discounts and offers never apply to Schedule 4 (prescription-only) treatments.
• Medicine names stay off public pages. Prescription medicine names are kept off public, patient-facing promotional surfaces.
• Messages are checked before they send. Marketing campaigns and automatic messages are checked for prescription medicine names, including disguised spellings, before they can be sent.
• Review requests stay clean. They never offer points or rewards for a review, they skip staff, and they are checked for prescription medicine names.
• Consent keeps its wording. Consent forms are signed digitally, and the exact wording the patient agreed to is stored with each signature and versioned. Consent for a patient under 18 is refused unless it goes through a guardian path.
• Records keep their history. Changes to treatment records are amended or struck out, never deleted.
• Data stays in Australia. Patient data is hosted in Sydney, and card numbers are handled by Stripe, never stored by Clinic App.

What Cliniko says. Cliniko's blog points practitioners to AHPRA's guidance on reviews and carries a guest post on the TGA advertising code, which is useful reading. Its features pages don't describe software checks that keep rewards, offers or messages off prescription-only treatments, and they don't list rewards or memberships, which is where those rules bite hardest in a cosmetic clinic.

Software cannot follow the rules for a clinic: the clinic and its practitioners stay responsible for their own advertising and care. What Clinic App does is take easy slips out of the front desk's hands, such as a points offer on a prescription treatment, a medicine name in a promotion or a reward for a review.

How do Cliniko and Clinic App compare side by side?

The Cliniko column comes from Cliniko's features pages, pricing page, security page, its gift voucher help article and its VaocherApp listing, checked on 29 October 2026. Clinic App rows describe the product as it runs on 29 October 2026. Software changes, so confirm anything that matters to you with Cliniko before you decide.

Cliniko is built around the treatment note. A cosmetic clinic needs the note, the next visit and the rules it advertises under in one system.

Which one suits a cosmetic or skin clinic?

The honest answer depends on where your clinic's money comes from, not on which feature list is longer.

Cliniko is likely the better fit if:

• you run several disciplines under one roof and need a different note template for each;
• most of your work is assessment and treatment notes, and repeat revenue is a small part of the business;
• you bill items with codes so patients can claim from a third party, which Cliniko's finance page supports through item codes on billable items.

Clinic App is likely the better fit if:

• a large share of your revenue comes from memberships, packages, vouchers or prepaid credit, and you are running those on spreadsheets, add-ons or goodwill;
• you want the diary, the desk, the memberships, the vouchers and the rewards in one place, so the front desk is not switching between tools at checkout;
• you want rewards, offers and messages that keep prescription treatments out by default, and consent wording stored with each signature.

A useful test: write down every tool your clinic pays for next to Cliniko today, such as a voucher app, a membership or billing tool, a loyalty app and a review request tool. If that list is long, the real comparison is the whole stack, not Cliniko on its own. For the costs side, see what clinic booking software costs in Australia. Our Clinic App vs Timely and Clinic App vs Fresha comparisons cover the same questions for those two systems.

If you are happy on Cliniko and only want to explore adding loyalty, we cover that question separately in how to add loyalty and membership to Cliniko.

What does switching from Cliniko to Clinic App involve?

Switching practice software is a project, not a weekend job. Plan it around your quieter weeks, not through your busiest ones.

Getting your data out of Cliniko is straightforward. Cliniko's help centre explains that an administrator can export every patient as a CSV file from Settings, then Data exports, with the date range set to "Any time" to capture everyone. Appointments come out as two separate exports: calendar events, which carry no patient information, and attendees, which list who attended. Treatment notes can be exported to PDF, as listed on Cliniko's health records page.

From there, a move to Clinic App runs like this:

1. A free 45-minute Patient Revenue Audit. We look at where your revenue comes from and where patients drift away.
2. We map how your clinic actually runs: who books, how the desk checks out, which memberships and packages exist, and which treatments, rooms and staff you have. Then we set the system up to match before switch day.
3. We do the move with you, and Zoe onboards in person. Our importer is built for Fresha and Timely exports today. If you are coming from Cliniko, bring your Cliniko exports to the audit and we will go through exactly what moves and how before you commit to anything.
4. Saved cards. Cliniko's payments page says Stripe processes payments and Cliniko never receives patient payment information. In Clinic App, patients get a "re-save your card" link.
5. Training. Each clinic gets its own training hub, with short step-by-step courses for the front desk, nurses and managers, built around that clinic's own set-up. More on that in how we train your team.

Keep your exported records, including the treatment note PDFs, stored safely for as long as your record-keeping obligations require, and agree a cut-over date with your team so no booking is made in two places. For the full checklist, read how easy it is to switch clinic software, and if you sell memberships, how to move memberships to a new system.

Zoe Wogan

Founder, Clinic App

Zoe founded Clinic App and works hands-on with cosmetic and skin clinics across Australia, from the first Patient Revenue Audit to switch day and staff training.