Signing up

Your first 50 referrals are free. There is no card and no automatic charge. Signup opens Refera with an empty referral list for your practice. Setup and going live do not start billing. After the free allowance, a practice administrator must explicitly choose a paid plan before any charge.

Available on all plansfour short account steps, followed by guided connection setup

A practice owner or manager creates the practice account. Refera then asks only for the inbox and the person who can approve Microsoft access.

The four signup steps

1. Find practice. Enter the practice ABN. Refera checks the Australian Business Register and fills the registered entity details it can verify. Confirm the practice name patients know, the closest practice type or specialty and any details the registry could not supply. The inclusive practice field covers GP, allied health, specialist, multidisciplinary and other referral-receiving teams. Nothing connects to the practice at this point.
2. Your details. Add your name, role and individual work email. This creates the first accountable Owner for the practice; it is not a shared reception login.
3. Check details. Review the practice and account-owner summary. Everything remains editable before signing.
4. Review & sign. Read the current agreement, confirm your authority, then sign with your typed name. A drawn mark is optional. An independent, unchecked option can subscribe the signer to a short setup-guidance series. It is not required to accept the agreement or create the workspace.

Refera emails a 30-minute confirmation link. Choosing Confirm and create workspace verifies the work email, creates an empty referral list with new referrals off and records the signed agreement.

After confirmation, setup has three plain stages: connect, check, work. Choose the inbox, let Refera check it, then open the shared referral list. Bookings stay in the system the team already uses.

If the work email or ABN is already associated with Refera, signup stops before the agreement and offers Sign in to existing workspace or Contact Refera. It does not create another workspace or send another signup email. The message deliberately does not reveal which detail matched. Use the individual work email previously used for Refera on the sign-in page; Refera then sends a fresh one-time sign-in link to that address.

If the optional setup series is selected, Refera records the exact consent version, wording fingerprint, server timestamp and signup source. It sends no more than three administrative emails over the first seven days, schedules each step from the previous confirmed delivery, stops when the workspace goes live and never includes patient or referral information. The recipient can switch it off under Settings > Notifications > Help me finish setup, or use the one-click unsubscribe link in any message. Required account and security messages are separate.

What happens after sign-in

The first screen asks only:

• which email provider the practice uses;
• whether a Microsoft 365 referral inbox already exists;
• the existing inbox address when one is ready, or to save that choice for later;
• whether the practice also uses HealthLink.

For Microsoft 365, first say whether the practice already has an inbox for referrals. If it does, enter the primary address Microsoft shows for that inbox and choose Open Microsoft. It can be a shared inbox or a staff inbox and does not need to be named referrals@. Microsoft groups and mailing lists are not inboxes and cannot be connected. If no suitable inbox exists, choose Not yet, help me plan it, choose the plan that fits, and save the step. Nothing is connected, and the practice or its IT provider can create or choose an inbox later.

Use a Microsoft 365 admin who can approve apps and manage Exchange for the practice. If that is not you, choose Copy approval link for IT. The Microsoft sign-ins each last 10 minutes and end after setup. Refera stores no staff password and keeps no ongoing administrator access. Refera then checks the chosen inbox automatically before new referrals start. Existing mail is not imported. If Microsoft cannot find the address, check that the administrator signed into the organisation that owns it. If Microsoft is temporarily unavailable, the saved request remains ready to retry and no permission is claimed.

Microsoft approval opens in the browser; Refera does not send an approval email to that inbox. If a different person administers Microsoft 365, use Copy approval link for IT. The link is short-lived and bound to the saved connection request.

In practical terms:

1. Connect. Choose the existing referral inbox and open Microsoft, or send the short-lived approval link to your Microsoft 365 admin or IT provider.
2. Check. Refera verifies that the chosen inbox can be read, another inbox is denied and a test email with no patient information arrives. New referrals stay off until every check passes.
3. Work. After the checks pass, new referrals appear in the shared list. Refera does not import older mail.

For Google Workspace or another provider, choose Save this choice. Choose Finish later to explore the empty referral list and resume from Settings > Connections.

A front-desk scanner can deliver PDFs through the verified inbox. Separate upload and QR channels are not available today and are not shown as signup choices. Settings > Connections shows only the paths the practice can actually configure.

Invite your team, or skip for now

After the connection request is saved, Invite your team opens Settings > People > Members and roles. Every receptionist needs their own Refera account with a unique work email. The nominated referral inbox is an intake source, never a shared staff login.

Select Send invitation to add the person’s access and email their sign-in link. A solo practice can skip this step and return later. Roles, security and offboarding are covered in Team accounts and roles.

Details for Microsoft 365 administrators

Microsoft requires Entra application consent and Exchange authority to approve read-only access for one inbox. One administrator or IT provider should hold both permissions. The two short admin sessions find the inbox, then create and check its scope; both expire. Ongoing access uses Refera’s certificate-backed application, not the administrator session. Read-only access uses mailbox-scoped Application Mail.Read and stays off until Refera confirms that the chosen inbox is allowed, another inbox is blocked and the delivery path works. Copy-ready reply text prepared inside Refera requires no Microsoft write permission. Creating an Outlook draft is a separate opt-in mailbox-scoped Application Mail.ReadWrite grant; sending is another separate Application Mail.Send grant, with named human approval for every send and no automatic sending. See Microsoft 365 mailbox.

Security before real referrals

Each team member secures their own account with a passkey or email plus an authenticator code. New referrals stay off until Refera completes the connection checks.

Your agreement copy

The current Refera terms publish the full document, version and SHA-256 fingerprint. The acceptance record binds the typed name, role, authority confirmation, email, UTC timestamp, exact document fingerprint and signup reference into the tamper-evident ledger. The executed PDF is available from workspace settings after sign-in.

Change or resume setup

Open Settings > Connections to see the saved request or current Microsoft connection. An Owner or Admin can disconnect an active connection. If polling stops before Microsoft access removal is proved, Settings shows the remaining administrator action and blocks reconnect. A selected provider is never labelled connected without server evidence. Once the signed agreement and all connection checks are complete, Refera activates capture automatically and records the result in the workspace history.

Open Settings > People > Members and roles to add, change or remove team access. Removing an account does not erase that person’s past sealed actions.