General settings

General Settings is the hospital’s identity: “Your clinic’s basic information and regional preferences.” It is a short tab with a long reach — the name and logo here appear on documents patients keep, and the timezone decides what time everything in the product happens.

What this tab controls

One card, General Information, with a single Save Changes button at the bottom. Every field on it is owner-only, with two exceptions: a manager can also change Patient ID prefix and Age of majority. An accountant sees every field filled in and disabled.

Control	What it does	Default
Account ID, with a Copy button	A permanent lookup code for your practice, shaped like `CE-7K4M-92QX`. Owners and managers only — see Find your Account ID	Set automatically, never changes
Clinic Logo	A square image. The hint says “Used on prescriptions, invoices, and general clinic branding.” Uploads and deletes take effect on their own, without Save Changes	None
Clinic Name	The hospital’s name. At least 2 characters	Your name at signup
Timezone	A searchable list of every timezone. “Used for scheduling and appointment reminders.”	UTC
Country	Where your hospital operates, from a searchable list. It decides which electronic signature statement people agree to before signing a document you send. While it is empty, your billing currency decides instead.	Not set
Patient ID prefix	The letters before the number on every new patient’s ID — CMC-0134. Two to six letters or numbers. Leave it empty to use the first three characters of your name	Empty (derived from your name)
Age of majority	The age at which a new patient is registered as an adult rather than a minor. Choose any age from 16 to 21.	18
Address	Free text, multi-line	Empty
Phone Number	Free text	Empty
Email Address	Must be a valid address if filled in	Empty
Website	Must be a full URL including `https://` if filled in	Empty
Clinic Description	”This description may be shown on your public booking page.”	Empty

The tab keeps itself current: if a colleague changes something while you have it open, the fields update in front of you.

Business hours

Below General Information, a separate Business hours card sets what your hospital considers a normal working day, one switch and a start/end time per weekday, shown in the timezone set above. A day left switched off counts as closed. This is what the Unusual access alerts out-of-hours check on the Security tab (see Access log, disclosure accounting and reviews) compares an access against. A day with no hours set at all counts as closed too, so a hospital that has never opened this card gets flagged more often, not less — not fewer alerts, until you set your real hours here.

Set it up

Upload the logo

Under Clinic Branding, add a square image. It saves on upload — you do not need Save Changes for it.

Set the name and timezone

Enter the hospital’s Clinic Name as you want it printed. Then set the Timezone — start typing a city and pick from the list. Get this right before anything else: it is the field with consequences.

Fill in the contact details

Address, Phone Number, Email Address and Website. Leave a field empty rather than guessing; a wrong number on an invoice is worse than none.

Write the description

A short paragraph about the hospital. It may appear on your public booking page, so write it for a patient rather than for staff.

Save

Select Save Changes. It confirms with “Clinic settings updated successfully.”

What changes once you save

Choosing your patient ID prefix

Every patient gets an ID like CMC-0134 — a prefix, then a number that counts up. If you leave Patient ID prefix empty, the prefix comes from the first three characters of your name, so “City Medical Centre” gives CIT. Set it yourself if you would rather it read CMC.

Existing patients keep the ID they already have. Changing the prefix affects new patients only — the ID on a patient’s card, in your paper notes and on an invoice you have already issued does not move.

The numbering carries on rather than restarting. If your last patient was CIT-0133 and you change the prefix to CMC, the next one is CMC-0134, not CMC-0001. That keeps every ID in your clinic unique, which is what lets the system stop two patients ever sharing one. Two to six letters or numbers, and it is stored in capitals — typing lowercase is fine, the field converts it. As you type, ClinikEHR checks it. A prefix that is offensive or reserved is refused outright and cannot be saved. If another clinic already uses the one you picked, you get an amber note rather than a refusal — that is allowed, because patient IDs only have to be unique inside your own clinic. It is worth knowing all the same if you exchange records with that clinic, since CMC-0134 alone would not tell the two of you apart.

What you changed	What you’ll notice
Patient ID prefix	The next patient registered gets an ID with the new prefix. Everyone already registered keeps theirs.
Age of majority	Changes the suggested client type on the registration form and the analytics tab’s adult/minor split, for anyone registered from now on. Nobody already registered is reclassified.
Clinic Name or Clinic Logo	Both start appearing on invoices, clinical documents and prescriptions, on your public booking page and in the patient portal. Anything generated from now on carries the new name and mark.
Timezone	Three things at once: the times shown against appointments, which business day a payment is counted in, and how ward medication doses are scheduled.
Country	The statement shown before someone signs a document electronically, and the line on the signing certificate that says which setting chose it. Documents already signed keep the statement they were signed under.
Address, Phone Number, Email Address	These are the contact details a patient reads on a document or a booking page.
Website	Shown where the hospital is presented publicly. It must be a full URL — the form refuses “Please enter a valid URL.” otherwise.
Clinic Description	May be shown on your public booking page.

Existing records are not re-stamped. A PDF that was already generated keeps the old name and logo; a payment already recorded stays in the business day it was recorded in. Changing the timezone changes how times are shown and how future work is scheduled — it does not move anything that has already happened. That makes timezone the one field worth getting right on day one. Changing it later on a running hospital shifts appointment times on screen and moves the boundary of the business day under your reporting, and it is the setting behind ward dose schedules.

Check it worked

Reload the tab; the fields should hold what you entered. Then generate one invoice or clinical document and confirm the name and logo on it. Finally open the appointments calendar and check a known appointment shows at the time your team would say it is at — if everything looks an hour or several hours out, the timezone is the field to revisit.

Common issues

Everything is filled in but I cannot type in any of it

This tab is owner-only. Managers and accountants can read it; the fields render disabled and the Save Changes button is not shown. A manager can still change Patient ID prefix and Age of majority.

"Please enter a valid URL."

Website needs the full address including the scheme — https://www.example.com, not www.example.com. Leave it empty if you would rather not have one.

The logo will not upload

Use a square image. If it uploaded but does not appear, reload the tab — the logo saves separately from the rest of the form.

Appointment times are all wrong by a few hours

The Timezone is set to somewhere else, or was never changed from UTC. Fix it here; times re-render immediately, and nothing already recorded is moved.

Documents still show the old name

Anything already generated keeps the details it was made with. Documents created after the save carry the new ones.

"Failed to update clinic settings. Please try again."

Nothing was saved. Check your connection and select Save Changes again.

Set up your hospital

Overview

Front desk

Outpatient

Inpatient

Maternity

Theatre

Diagnostics

Pharmacy unit

Revenue

Insurance

Supply chain

Records

Executive

Settings · Practice

Settings · Billing

Settings · Patient experience

Settings · Communications & AI

Settings · System

What this tab controls

Business hours

Set it up

What changes once you save

Choosing your patient ID prefix

Check it worked

Common issues

​What this tab controls

​Business hours

​Set it up

​What changes once you save

​Choosing your patient ID prefix

​Check it worked

​Common issues

What this tab controls

Business hours

Set it up

What changes once you save

Choosing your patient ID prefix

Check it worked

Common issues