Nookal Virtual Assistant: a VA who runs the Diary, the classes and the claiming

Nookal doesn’t make much noise. Co-founded in 2010 by a physiotherapist who’d owned multi-location clinics, run out of Queensland, quietly the book of record for a serious slice of Australian physio. We know because it keeps showing up in our own client base: practice owners who live in the Diary, run the Pilates timetable as Classes, claim through three rails, and have nobody whose actual job is driving any of it.

This page exists because those clinics keep needing one, not because Australia is searching “nookal virtual assistant” in volume. Yet.

A day inside your Nookal

The day opens in the Diary: the unconfirmed get chased, the gaps get flagged. When a cancellation lands, your VA opens the Waiting List behind the Clock icon in the Message Centre, finds the client whose preferred provider, day and time fit the hole, and drags the booking straight in. Nothing matching? The megaphone sends a bulk message to the whole list, and the first reply takes the slot.

Then the rosters. Every group session in Nookal is a Class with a participant cap. Your VA checks the week’s class lists, tops up short sessions from the Waiting List (it holds class requests as well as one-on-ones), and marks no-shows as Did Not Arrive rather than leaving them Pending, because that status is what fires the follow-up later.

Then money. Every attended booking gets its invoice raised, then claiming admin on whichever rails you use: Nookal’s own Medicare/DVA Online Claiming, where claims queue from the invoice and generally process overnight, the Medicare Report listing statuses and error responses; Tyro Health Online for Medicare bulk bill and patient claims, DVA, icare, WorkCover QLD and private health, no terminal needed; HICAPS Digital Claims for NDIS, TAC and WorkSafe Victoria, with the HICAPS Report checked for rejections and each one chased with the error attached. Outstanding accounts get worked from the Ageing Debts Report, date range set to 10 years (Nookal’s own tip, otherwise the buckets lie), grouped by Payer: statements to third parties, an agreed follow-up rhythm for private debt.

Weekly: the Providers and Practice Report, Forward Booking Averages in particular, which shows how booked the coming weeks really are and whose clients aren’t rebooking. The Recalls campaigns under Manage > Communications get maintained, triggered when bookings hit Completed, Cancelled or Did Not Arrive, the after-the-last-appointment trigger quietly doing your rebooking work, and the replies that come back actually answered.

And letters. Referral replies and GP updates drafted from Letter Templates, placeholders filling in the client and Case details, the finished letter saved against its Case and emailed or printed from inside Nookal. One wrinkle: Nookal keeps the Letters tab inside the clinical area of the client file, so opening it to a VA is a deliberate Permission Group decision, made on your terms. The words are the practitioner’s; the formatting, sending and filing never needed to be.

What Nookal won’t do by itself

The Waiting List won’t work itself. It’s a separate list per Diary Location, ordered by when people were added, and nothing in it contacts a client or books a slot on its own: a human opens the Clock icon, spots the match and drags the booking in, and the drag-and-drop only covers Services anyway, class spots get booked the long way. Zanda pops up matching waitlist clients the moment you process a cancellation; Nookal expects a person to be the matchmaker. Recalls carry fine print too: one campaign can’t cover Services and Classes both, so a clinic running consults and Pilates needs at least two, and a client missing the Reminder SMS or Reminder Emails consent tick silently never hears from any of them. None of it is broken. It’s work built for a front desk, and the VA is the front desk.

(On Cliniko rather than Nookal? That has its own page.)

What never moves to the VA

Clinical notes, clinical communication, item numbers and fees. Nookal doesn’t ship fixed roles: you build Permission Groups in Setup, and every section gets Edit, View or No access per group. A VA’s group keeps clinical notes on No access, full stop, and each user has an individual login with a user activity log, so nothing is ambiguous about who did what. And when a client message drifts clinical, it goes to you under a written escalation rule instead of getting answered.

The quiet bonus: Nookal only bills for practitioners. Admin logins are unlimited and free, so the VA never appears on your software invoice.

Pricing and the first step

Nookal support is admin-tier work, $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST. Ten to fifteen hours a week covers most clinics, more where the VA doubles as the phone-and-inbox front desk. Placement runs 7-10 business days, the first 5-7 of them supervised inside your own Nookal, with a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and leaving takes 14 days notice, nothing more.

For the industry angle there’s the physiotherapy page, and the VA cost guide breaks down every dollar. Or book a discovery call with Jenn: 48+ VA placements into Australian businesses since 2024, and she’ll say so plainly if your clinic isn’t ready for one yet. Have your Waiting List and your Ageing Debts Report open when you call. The hours are sitting in them.