A client profile is the record the rest of their care hangs off — notes, forms, medications, documents and shifts all attach to it. Creating one is short: four details are required, and everything else can be filled in now or later.

The four are first name, last name, date of birth and gender. Date of birth is doing more work than it looks: it is what tells two people with the same name apart, it cannot be in the future, and it decides whether the profile can be attached to a facility instead of a street address — a client recorded as a child can have a facility; an adult cannot, and choosing one clears the other.

Search before you create. A duplicate profile splits one person's care records across two files, and merging them afterwards is not a five-minute job.

Which fields beyond the four matter depends on how your organisation is set up — custom fields included — so read the form rather than assuming everything outside the basics is optional.

Step 1
Open Clients
Clients in the side menu. Search for the person first: creating a second profile for someone who already exists is the expensive mistake here.
Step 2
Open the form
Add Client opens the full form rather than a quick dialog — every section of the profile is on this one page.
Step 3
First name
Required. Record it as the person is known in your records, not an abbreviation.
Step 4
Last name
Required.
Step 5
Date of birth
Required, and it cannot be in the future. It separates similar names, and for a client recorded as a child it unlocks attaching them to a facility instead of an address.
Step 6
Gender
Required, chosen from the list. It starts empty — nothing is picked for you.
Step 7
Everything else can wait
Address, funding and your organisation's own custom fields can be filled in now or after saving. Once the four required details are in, Create Client saves it.
Step 8
Where you land
The client's own page, with tabs for contacts, documents, forms, medications, funding and shifts. Tasks are set up from here — not during creation.
Step 9
Facility and address are alternatives
Picking a facility clears the address, and typing an address clears the facility — deliberately, because a client lives in one place or the other, and having both invites the wrong one being used. Changing the date of birth from a child's to an adult's clears the facility too.
Step 10
Before you create, search
Client search matches name, email, phone and the linked facility, and it matches part of a word — so a fragment is enough to find out whether the person is already there. Also check the Archived tab: an archived client is not gone, and re-creating them makes two records where one exists.