Tunisie
Attracting patients via Facebook and Instagram
In Tunisia, the first contact with a practice often happens on social media.
6 min read
A practice rarely has a payment problem. It has a matching problem: money arrives through several doors — the counter, a transfer, a gateway, an insurer — and the invoice each amount belongs to sits behind a different one. Collecting online is worth something only when it closes that gap.
Where the money actually arrives
Doctopass takes payment by Stripe internationally, and by Konnect and Flouci in Tunisia, in dinar. Payments taken at the counter — cash, cheque, transfer, card, insurance — are recorded in the same system, on all three plans. In every case the party collecting is the practice.
A payment gateway is the third-party service that moves a card or wallet transaction into the practice's account. It is contracted separately and governed by its own terms; Doctopass connects to one, and does not become one.
| Channel | Who collects | What Doctopass does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Cash, cheque or transfer at the counter | The practice | Recorded as a manual payment, reconciled against the invoice |
| Card at the counter | The practice | Recorded as a manual payment, reconciled against the invoice |
| Insurance share | The practice | Recorded as a payment method, reconciled against the invoice |
| Konnect (Tunisia, in dinar) | The practice | Payment taken through the gateway, against the invoice held here |
| Flouci (Tunisia, in dinar) | The practice | Payment taken through the gateway, against the invoice held here |
| Stripe (international) | The practice | Payment taken through the gateway, against the invoice held here |
One invoice, every channel
Matching a payment to the invoice it settles is the same operation whichever door the money came through. Recording and auto-reconciling manual payments — cash, cheque, transfer, card, insurance — is on all three plans. Reconciliation means one narrow thing here: matching an amount received to the invoice it pays. It is not bookkeeping, and it is not a ledger.
For a patient covered by CNAM, the invoice generated after the consultation shows the patient share, the CNAM share and the CNAM code, so the amount taken at the counter is the patient share on that invoice; the bordereau is generated from that same invoice, and conveyance to the caisse stays with the practice. That whole sequence is the subject of CNAM billing and the bordereau.
Count the invoices still marked Pending, multiply by your own consultation fee, then look at how many weeks old the oldest ones are. That arithmetic is yours; no figure we could print here would be. Matching is what makes the count answerable at any moment.
The invoice writes itself
Collecting online fixes half the problem. The other half sits upstream: the invoice has to derive from the consultation rather than be typed again after it. Auto-invoicing from the consultation starts with Pro; the PDFs generate on their own. Revenue analytics — the view that puts collected and outstanding side by side — also starts with Pro. Essential covers invoicing and manual payments, without the automation. An invoice retyped after the consultation is an invoice waiting to disagree with it.
| Capability | Essential | Pro | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invoicing + manual payments (cash, cheque, transfer, card, insurance) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Auto-invoicing from consultation | No | Yes | Yes |
| Revenue analytics | No | Yes | Yes |
| Full audit trail | No | Yes | Yes |
| Audit log search + investigation UI | No | No | Yes |
| Secretary seats | 1 | 3 | 5 |
The reason to put the gateway and the invoice in one system is in that table: a payment taken where the invoice does not live has to be carried back by hand. The rest of the billing circuit sits inside the same practice management software in Tunisia, alongside the record and the calendar.
A gateway is not a ledger
We will not publish a fee table or a settlement calendar for Stripe, Konnect or Flouci. The rates, the delays and the refund mechanics that bind a practice are the ones written into its own contract, and nothing we could print here would override them. The providers are third parties; a practice's use of one is subject to that provider's own terms, and the answers belong there.
The gateway collects; Doctopass matches the payment to the invoice, and neither keeps the practice's books. There is no payment link sent to a patient and no paying from the patient portal: the practice takes the payment. We would rather write that limit down than let it be discovered after signature.
Doctopass itself charges nothing per transaction — no setup fees, no per-note charges, free data migration, and patients are free and unlimited on every plan. What the gateway charges is a separate contract, and it should be read as one.
Who may take money
At the counter it is usually not the doctor collecting, so the permission matters as much as the channel. Create invoices is one of the permissions shown in the product, granted per secretary, toggled individually and logged individually. Every change is recorded, on the plans that carry the audit trail.
Seats are one secretary on Essential, three on Pro and five on Premium. The full audit trail starts with Pro; audit log search with the investigation UI is Premium only. A practice that expects to investigate a discrepancy months later should choose against that gate. The practical shape of the arrangement is the subject of delegating to a secretary.
Worth remembering
Take the payment through whichever door the patient uses, record the counter payments in the same place, and let every one of them reconcile against the invoice. That is the whole procedure, and it is the only one that keeps the outstanding column honest. Doctopass matches payments to invoices; it does not keep the books, and it does not send the patient a link.
Frequently asked
My patients pay cash. What does online payment give me?
It gives you one place instead of several. Cash is recorded, not replaced: recording manual payments and reconciling them against the invoice is on all three plans, and a payment taken through a gateway lands on that same invoice. From Pro the revenue analytics count them together. The gateway is added for the patients who prefer it; nobody is pushed off the channel they already use.
Can I send a patient a link to pay?
No. There is no payment link sent to a patient and no paying from the patient portal; the practice takes the payment, by Stripe, Konnect or Flouci, or at the counter. That is a real limit of the product and we would rather write it down here than let it be discovered after signature.
What happens with an insured patient?
The patient share is collected normally, and "insurance" is one of the recorded payment methods — alongside cash, cheque, transfer and card — so it reconciles against the same invoice and you can see which part is settled and which is not. What the insurer does with the claim after that is the insurer's circuit; verify it with them.
Which plan do I need to collect payment?
Invoicing and manual payments are on all three plans, from Essential at 69 DT per doctor per month, billed annually. Auto-invoicing from the consultation and revenue analytics start with Pro at 159 DT, and Premium at 269 DT adds audit log search. There is a 14-day free trial; the full comparison is on the pricing page.
A payment that cannot find its invoice is not collected — it is only received. To watch a consultation become an invoice, an invoice become a payment through whichever door the patient used, and that payment reconcile itself without anyone ticking a spreadsheet, request a 30-minute demo — bring one real week of takings from every door, cash included; it is the only test that finds the ones that never matched.