Zanda Virtual Assistant: a VA who knew it back when it was Power Diary

Somewhere in late 2024, Power Diary became Zanda. Same software, same appointment book Australian practices have run on for over a decade, new name, new colours, and a bee mascot called Bizzy. If you searched “zanda virtual assistant”, there’s a decent chance you typed “power diary virtual assistant” the week before. Either way, the problem you’re solving is the same: the practice lives in that calendar, and the person driving it, confirming, claiming, chasing forms, working the waitlist, is you, between sessions, with a client in the waiting room.

Which is a waste, because Zanda is arguably the most admin-shaped of the allied health platforms. The waitlist matches clients to cancellations on its own. Referral expiries live in an actual report. Claiming goes straight to Medicare without a terminal in sight. But every one of those features ends with a step a human has to do, and the features only earn their keep when someone does it daily.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your Zanda

Morning: the calendar gets a pass. Unconfirmed appointments chased, gaps flagged, recurring bookings checked. Then Zanda’s best trick: when a cancellation is processed, it pops up the Waitlist clients whose preferred practitioner, location and availability match the freed slot, and offers to SMS them. Your VA sends it, watches the replies land in the Messaging Panel, and books the first yes. Most days the slot is backfilled before the practitioner even knows it was empty.

Then forms. Tomorrow’s new clients get checked against the Client Forms report: anything still sitting in Draft gets a friendly nudge through the Client Portal, so your psychologist isn’t spending the first ten minutes of an intake collecting a history the form already asked for.

Then money. A daily sweep for appointments that haven’t been invoiced, outstanding invoices worked on a chasing cadence you’ve approved, and the claiming admin run through Tools > Medicare: bulk bill and patient claims submitted through Zanda’s own Medicare integration, statuses watched there, and anything stuck on Pended chased now rather than discovered at BAS time. DVA rides on the same Medicare setup, so veterans’ claims are the same workflow, not a separate headache.

Weekly, the one that matters most in a psychology practice: the Client Referral Expiry report. Mental health treatment plan referrals run out quietly, and a client arriving on session seven of a six-session referral is an awkward conversation and an unbillable gap. Your VA works that report every week so the re-referral request goes to the GP before it’s needed. Monthly, the Inactive Clients report becomes the recall list, and everyone who drifted off without a next booking gets a call.

And the quiet stuff: reminder templates tuned for email and SMS, two-way replies answered the same day from the Messaging Panel, and your way of doing all of it written down as the VA learns it, inside Zanda’s built-in Practice Operations Manual, where the next person can actually find it.

The honest bit

Zanda has no single “clients without upcoming appointments” report the way Cliniko does. The recall list gets built in Advanced Search instead: stack the Had an Appointment Between and No Appointments Between filters and the right list falls out, with the Inactive Clients report catching anyone who drifted off months ago. It works, but somebody has to know the recipe and run it weekly; there’s no one-click button, and we won’t pretend there is. Also, the waitlist match only fires when the cancellation is actually processed on the calendar; a cancellation taken over the phone and never entered triggers nothing. Process discipline is most of the value here, which is rather the point of hiring someone whose entire shift is the process.

(Chose Cliniko instead? There’s a whole page on that.)

What stays with you

Clinical notes, all clinical communication, fees and item numbers. The notes part isn’t a policy we wrote, it’s a permission Zanda built: a VA on the Administrative access level can’t open the clinical Records pages, the one override that could change that stays off, and Profile Access settings can narrow things further. Anything a client says that sounds clinical escalates to you under a written rule, never gets answered by the VA.

One pleasant detail that survived the rebrand: Zanda prices per practitioner, and admin users are free. Your VA’s seat adds exactly nothing to the software bill.

What it costs and where to start

Zanda admin sits on the admin tier, $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, typically 10-15 hours a week, more if the VA also answers front-of-house enquiries. Placement takes 7-10 business days, with 5-7 days supervised inside your Zanda before any solo work, a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and no lock-in beyond 14 days notice.

The psychology page covers the industry side, and the VA cost guide has the full pricing picture. Otherwise book a discovery call with Jenn, who has placed 48+ VAs into Australian businesses since 2024 and will tell you straight if your practice isn’t ready for one. Bring your waitlist and your Client Referral Expiry report. We’ll find the hours.