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Two different things are called a referral here.

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Bringing your own clients

Anyone arriving through your booking link, or through any Open Therapy URL carrying ?ref=<your-handle>, is recorded as yours. A client attributed to your link carries no introduction fee, on their first session or any session after it. See Your booking link for claiming your handle.

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First touch wins

The handle is stored in a cookie.
It’s per client, not per pairing. A second therapist can’t take it over by sending the client a link later.

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When attribution is lost

Ordinary ways to break the cookie:
  • Opens your link on their phone, books on their laptop
  • Clears cookies, or uses a private window for one visit and not the other
  • Finds you by searching the directory rather than following your link
  • Took your link more than 90 days before booking
  • Already has an Open Therapy account with an earlier attribution on it
Nothing recovers it, and the introduction fee for that first session is charged normally. If you think a client was misattributed, write to billing@opentherapy.app with the client’s name and the session date.
Send the link itself rather than telling someone to look you up. “Book at opentherapy.link/your-name” is worth the fee; “find me on Open Therapy” isn’t.
A self-referral — your own profile link, from your own account — is discarded.

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Taking a referral from a GP or another clinician

/refer is a form for a referring clinician: a GP, a paediatrician, another therapist, a school counsellor. It’s public and needs no account on either side. They give:
The public referral form at /refer, promising a call within a business day, the person's own choice of clinician and word back once they've been seen, with fields for the person's name, phone and email, chips for what they're referred for and how soon, an optional therapist name, an attachment field for the referral letter and treatment plan, a referrals email address and phone number, and a note that it is not a crisis service with the numbers for 000 and Lifeline

The form asks for enough to make one phone call, and the letter comes across as an attachment

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Two things the form insists on

Consent is a checkbox, not an assumption. “My patient knows about this referral and has agreed to be contacted by Open Therapy.” The typed part is a handoff, not a history. Clinical detail belongs in the attached letter.

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What happens to it

The referral is emailed to Open Therapy and the referrer gets a copy at their own address. The person referred is contacted within one business day. Nothing from the form is written to a database, and attachments pass through the email without being kept. Once the person has an account, documents go into their file the ordinary way.
A referral through /refer doesn’t appear in your workspace, and there is no referrals queue for therapists. If the referrer named you, the person turns up as a booking or an enquiry like anyone else.

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Naming you on the form

The referrer can search for a therapist and pick you. A name that doesn’t resolve travels with the referral anyway.
A referral arriving this way is not attributed to your link and carries the ordinary introduction fee. If you want a referrer to send people straight to you fee-free, give them your booking link instead.

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If someone is at immediate risk

The referral form is not an urgent care pathway. Nobody watches it out of hours, and “this week if possible” is the fastest it goes. If someone is at immediate risk, call 000. Lifeline is 13 11 14. See Getting help.