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

1. Secure your account. Before any practice data opens, add a passkey (recommended) or an authenticator app, then save your one-time recovery codes. Every later sign-in asks for the same passkey or code. See Signing in.
2. Read and sign your practice agreement. If the current agreement still needs the Owner’s signature, the Owner sees the full published agreement next, then signs with their name and role. If the sign-in was not recent enough, Refera first asks the Owner to verify with the passkey or authenticator. Sign later is there if the Owner is not ready: “Not ready to sign? You can still use Refera. We will ask again next time you sign in.” Staff and invited members never see this step.
3. Connect the referral inbox. The rest of this section covers it.

The first setup screen asks only whether the practice already has a Microsoft 365 referral inbox. Enter the existing inbox address when it is ready, or save a plan to prepare one with IT. Gmail, other inbox providers and HealthLink are coming soon and use the separate Request access path.

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 Continue to save it. 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.

Organisation approval needs a Microsoft administrator who can approve the application. Inbox approval needs someone who can manage Exchange permissions. The same person or two different administrators can complete the steps. Under Microsoft approval, choose I have Microsoft admin access or Our admin will approve, then use Continue to Microsoft or Copy secure link for the current step. The Microsoft links each last 30 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 secure link. 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 it can read the chosen inbox and that its access stops there. New referrals stay off until every check passes; no second mailbox or setup email is needed.
3. Work. After the checks pass, new referrals appear in the shared list. Refera does not import older mail.

For Gmail, another inbox provider or HealthLink, choose Request access. Refera records the specific connection your practice needs and contacts the account owner when that connection is ready to test. It does not claim or configure access in the meantime. Choose Finish later to explore the empty referral list and resume Microsoft setup 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. The same administrator or two different administrators can complete the two steps. Organisation approval and inbox approval are separate short steps; a mailbox lookup may need its own sign-in. 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 and that its access stops there: against an unrelated mailbox when the organisation has one, or before and after access is granted when it does not. These are access checks, not proof that an email was delivered. Copy-ready reply text prepared inside Refera requires no Microsoft write permission. Outlook draft creation and sending are unavailable. Refera provides copy-ready text only; staff use the practice’s usual email system. The IT reference keeps the separate permission requirements for those unavailable features.

Security before real referrals

Each team member secures their own account with a passkey or email plus an authenticator code at first sign-in, and proves it again at every sign-in. 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.