SOAP Notes: Massage Client Log

In many U.S. states, yes: massage boards or state health-record laws require therapists to keep client treatment records, often for several years after the last session, with longer rules for minors. The exact retention period and what must be recorded vary by state and change over time, so always verify with your own board. Even where records are not strictly required, contemporaneous SOAP notes are your best professional protection if treatment is ever questioned.

The download is free and includes full functionality for your first 3 clients: unlimited SOAP notes, body charts, intake forms and consent signatures. A single one-time purchase of US$24.99 unlocks unlimited clients. There is no subscription, no account and no recurring fee of any kind. Most practice-management suites charge US$30–100 every month; this app you buy once and own.

The app does not claim HIPAA compliance, because HIPAA compliance is a property of your practice, not of a notes app. Many cash-pay solo therapists are not HIPAA covered entities at all; therapists who bill insurance electronically may be. What the app does is keep every record encrypted on your own device with no account and no cloud, so your clients’ data never passes through our servers; we could not read it if we wanted to. Confidentiality duties under your state board’s rules remain yours; the app’s encryption, app lock and local-only storage are designed to help you meet them.

There is nothing to cancel. The unlock is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Your records live on your device, not on our servers, and viewing, searching and exporting them are free forever. Unlike cloud practice-management systems, your client history can never be held behind a lapsed payment.

Yes, the professional way. A finalized note is locked and cannot be silently rewritten; instead, you add a dated addendum, and the original text and timestamps are preserved. Records are hash-chained, so any tampering with the stored history is evident. That is exactly the record-integrity behaviour boards and courts expect from clinical-style notes.

No, deliberately. This is a records tool: clients, intake, SOAP notes, body charts, signatures, export. If you need online booking, card payments or insurance claims, a cloud practice-management suite is the right product, and many therapists use one for the front desk while keeping their clinical notes in a private, offline app they own.

Often not, and no app can make you compliant either way. HIPAA applies to covered entities, which generally means providers who transmit health information electronically for billing and similar standard transactions. A cash-pay solo therapist who does not bill insurance electronically is frequently outside that definition; a therapist who does bill electronically may be inside it. Either way, compliance is a property of your practice, not a feature you can buy. What this app gives you is encryption on your own device, no account and no cloud, so client information does not sit on someone else’s server. If you are unsure which side of the line you are on, ask a professional adviser rather than trusting a marketing badge.

Yes, and without paying. Export to PDF or CSV is free and never sits behind the unlock, as does encrypted backup, so your records can leave the app whenever you want them to. That is deliberate: records you cannot retrieve are not really yours, and a client file you may need years from now should not depend on a company still being in business.

Yes. Everything lives on the device, so notes, charts, intake forms and export all work in a basement treatment room with no signal. There is no sync to wait for and no account to log into. A connection is needed only to download the app and to make the one-time purchase.

It varies more than most therapists expect. Periods run from about three years to seven or more, and several states start the clock when the therapeutic relationship ends rather than at the date of service, which can be years apart. Minors usually have a longer rule tied to turning 18. We publish the rules we have checked against each board’s own published source on our record retention by state page, and the app shows a keep-until date per client file. Treat both as guidance and confirm with your board, because rules do change.