Overview
Packages allow your practice to sell prepaid bundles of charge items (such as services and/or goods) outside of a membership. Packages are purchased upfront with a one-time price and can include one or multiple charge items.
With Packages, your practice can:
Sell bundles of services or products (e.g., multiple visits at a discount, discounted labs, welcome kits, Botox units)
Collect full payment upfront
Automatically track redemptions over time and give visibility into remaining balances
Configure your preferred accounting style for handling packages (deferred or cash basis)
This feature is designed to help practices expand care offerings, reduce manual tracking, and ensure accurate billing, accounting, and reporting.
What Are Packages?
Packages are prepaid bundles of existing charge items. Unlike memberships (which include services within a recurring monthly fee), packages:
Are purchased separately from a membership
Require a one-time upfront payment
Include a defined quantity of specific charge items
Track and restrict utilization over time
Examples:
Bundle of 4 office visits
4-month postpartum care package with various visit types and products
100 units of Botox
Welcome kit (consult + scale + product bundle)
Discounted lab bundle
This feature release focuses on selling Packages to members; but in the future, we seek to improve the experience for selling packages to non-members without requiring workarounds like $0 memberships to maintain an 'active status' or creating inactive patients.
How It Works
Package Design
Packages are a type of charge in Hint. You create and manage your package offerings under Settings -> Charges & Taxes. Select Package instead of a standalone item to create each of your various bundled offerings. Then you can search for each package name when you sell it to a patient.
Multiple charge items with set quantities can be added to each package. You can also mix services and goods in one package, such as specific visit types or various products.
Practices can set an overall package price to offer a discount or promotion. The package price defaults to a sum of all of its included charge items, but it can be easily edited to match your practice’s offerings.
Practices can also set an Expiration Date per package to incentivize use. These will display on both the provider and patient portal, and restrict a patient’s package usage once the date has passed
Selling & Redeeming Packages
To sell a package to a customer, practice users simply add a package to an invoice. It displays as a single line item, with a list of included items in the invoice details. All payment is collected up front. In 2026, Hint is actively working on adding the ability for patients to purchase packages directly in the patient portal. Stay tuned!
When staff add an included charge item from a package to an invoice the system automatically detects eligibility. The item gets redeemed and linked to the original balance, with remaining balances viewable on the provider and patient portal. Each redemption logs the service date, item, category, and individual items’ allocated value.
Both staff and patients can view:
Remaining balances
Consumption history (dates each item was used)
Expiration dates
Before You Start
Packages require:
Charge items to bundle
Clear pricing strategy (standard vs discounted bundle)
Defined expiration policy (optional)
Accounting preference (deferred/upon purchase recognition vs upfront recognition)
Set Up
Step 1: Create a Package
Navigate to Admin > Charges & Taxes
On the Charge Items tab, select +New Item
Select Package as the Item Type
Name your package
Add included charge items and quantities
Review the default total price (sum of included items)
Adjust total package price as desired (such as offering a discount)
Individual item allocations will automatically adjust. These individual amounts are solely stored behind the scenes to support item-level accounting.
Review tax settings. Total taxes are automatically calculated based on whether each item is taxable or non-taxable.
Set expiration date (if applicable)
Confirm Revenue Recognition accounting preferences.
Packages are set to Upon Consumption (also known as Deferred Revenue) by default as an accounting best practice for selling goods that are redeemed in the future.
This defers revenue from each item until it is consumed by the patient. However you have the option to claim all revenue upfront by using the ‘Upon Initial Purchase’ Revenue Recognition Setting.
You also have the option to set revenue to be recognized upon initial purchase - which means it will not be classified as deferred revenue and will show up in the billed revenue report immediately.
Click Create
Step 2: Sell a Package
Create or open a draft patient invoice
Add the package as a charge item
Invoice will show:
One package line item
Details of included components
Issue invoice and collect full payment
Once purchased, the package is active and ready for redemption. It will display under the Memberships & Packages tab for a given patient, as well as under the Patient Tab.
Step 3: Redeem Package Items
When delivering a service or product included in a package:
Add the corresponding charge item to a new invoice for a patient
The system will:
Detect eligibility
Automatically apply a $0 price
Log the redemption
Decrement the remaining quantity
Move the item’s revenue from deferred to billed
You can view remaining balances and usage history in the patient profile under Memberships & Packages. The patient can also review their balance from the patient portal.
Patient Experience
Patients can:
Purchase packages through providers’ invoice checkout. (Upcoming in 2026 patients will be able to buy packages directly through the patient portal).
See package details included on their invoice
View on the patient portal:
Remaining units
Expiration dates
Usage history
Each redemption is clearly reflected in their invoice history and will show on the patient portal.
Important Notes
Full payment is required at time of purchase.
Partial refunds are not supported once an item from a package has been consumed.
Redemptions must use existing charge items included in the package.
Packages are separate from memberships and do not modify or impact membership coverage rules. If a membership happens to include the same charge item, Hint will draw down the balance from the package first.
Invoice revisions are restricted. You can’t revise a package’s price from the invoice. It needs to be edited at the package level because it directly impacts the standalone purchase pricing configured for accounting purposes.
How Package Revenue Reporting Works
When you add a package to an invoice, it appears as a single line item — simple and clean for your patients to see.
Behind the scenes, however, we automatically break that package down by each individual item it contains. This means your revenue reports give you a much more detailed picture: instead of seeing one lump-sum package amount, you'll see revenue attributed to each item within the package, organized by its category.
By default, package revenue is set to Deferred Recognition. This means that when a package is purchased, the full amount is held in your built-in Deferred Revenue report — this report shows money that has been collected for services that haven't been delivered yet and are therefore considered a liability.
As your patient uses each item in the package, that item's revenue moves from deferred to your Billed Revenue report, reflecting that the service has now been provided. This is an accounting standard tracking revenue for packages, since it aligns what you've earned with what you've actually delivered.
Here’s what to expect in each report:
Deferred Revenue Report — Each item is tracked individually from the moment the package is purchased. All items from a package will show here initially and you can click into the invoice to see the originating package for each item. As a patient uses items from their package, the revenue for that item moves from deferred to billed — and your reports reflect that shift item by item.
Billed Revenue Report — As items get consumed, each item in the package appears on its own line with its corresponding category, so you can see exactly where your revenue is coming from and which categories (eg labs, visits). You can also click into any line to trace it back to the original package invoice.
If it better fits your practice's needs, you can optionally set a package’s revenue recognition settings to Immediate Recognition instead. With this setting, the full package revenue is always recorded as billed at the time of purchase — no deferred balance — and all items appear in your Billed Revenue report right away, regardless of when services are actually used.
The bottom line: your invoices stay simple and easy to understand, while your revenue reports give you the category-level detail you need to track your business accurately.
FAQ
General
Q: What is a package?
A package is a prepaid bundle of services and/or goods that a patient purchases upfront and redeems over time.
Q: Who can purchase packages?
Both members and non-members. However in the beta version, only memberships drive a patient’s ‘status’ in Hint. So if someone is a non-member but you want them to be active due to a package purchase, you can create a $0 membership for now.
Q: Can packages include multiple types of items?
Yes. Packages can include a mix of services and goods across categories.
Q: Can I discount a package?
Yes. You can set a custom total price when creating a package below the default sum of included items.
Q: How is inventory tracking handled?
When tangible goods are redeemed:
Practice inventory is decremented
Patient-level package balances decrement upon redemption
Q: Can I ‘undo’ a consumption event?
Redemptions occur through a $0 invoice workflow using existing charge items. Today you cannot undo or ‘void’ a utilization event. For example if you log a $0 invoice to redeem a package item for a patient, you cannot then void/cancel the invoice or undo the redemption event to update their balance.
Selling & Billing
Q: How does a package appear on an invoice?
It appears as a single line item with included components listed in the details.
Q: Is full payment required upfront?
Yes. Packages must be paid in full at time of purchase.
Q: Can I refund a package?
Practice users can process refunds for the full package purchase. Once an item from a package is consumed, the package can no longer be refunded.
Q: Can I edit a package?
Yes, you can edit your package offering at any time such as which items are included, total price, and accounting settings. However, any edits will only apply to future purchases.
Purchasing a package locks package terms at time of purchase for that patient.