Twenty-plus years ago our applications started life as Filemaker databases, built by self-employed practitioners for their own clinical and varied business needs. Today CrystalSolutions, PraxisClinic and SoleTrader are fully browser-based, self-hosted PHP/MySQL applications — installable on a Mac, Windows PC, Synology NAS, shared hosting or your own server. One-off price, no subscriptions, your data on your own server.
CrystalSolutions & PraxisClinic
Practice management for holistic & complementary health practitioners
Both applications share the same codebase and are essentially the same; one is blue, the other green! — CrystalSolutions for established practitioners, PraxisClinic for those newly setting up in practice. The emphasis throughout is on fast, structured input — mosaic-style dropdowns, colour-coded labels and quick-entry fields designed to be used at the end of a session rather than during it.
The full clinical record spans five pages:
- Page 1 — patient demographics, contacts, GP details, presenting condition and flags
- Page 2 — case history, intake and systems review
- Page 3 — treatment record with sessions, medicines and outcomes
- Page 4 — treatment plans with clinic and home goals
- Page 5 — Five Elements, pulse history and astrology profile
Alongside the clinical record:
- Scheduling — day, week and month diary views
- Accounts — income, expenditure and VAT summaries
- Letters — GP referral, discharge and reminder templates with mail-merge
- Documents — attach and manage clinical documents and images
- Imaging & X-ray records
- Homeopathic & herbal medicine records (CrystalSolutions)
- Podiatry / chiropody clinical page (CrystalSolutions)
- CPD recording (CrystalSolutions)
- Clinical audit — drill down across 30+ fields to find outcomes, conditions and demographics
- Statistics — condition and outcome trends across your practice
- Contacts — GPs, consultants and insurers
- Medicines management — search and sort
- Stock management
- Mileage log & Self Assessment summary
- Multi-user with tiered access levels
- AES-256-CBC field-level encryption — switchable in Setup
- Import / export — CSV in and out
- Database backup built in
- Patient enquiry widget — embed on your website
Full feature list → ·
Gallery → ·
Try the CrystalSolutions demo → ·
Try the PraxisClinic demo →
SoleTrader
Holistic Business management for self-employed professionals with multiple ventures
SoleTrader covers the business side — clients, projects, jobs, accounts and invoicing — with the same self-hosted, no-subscription approach. Whether you run one business or several, it gives you a clean organised record of every client, job and project in one place.
- Full client records — contact, notes, documents and images
- Job log per client — service, fee, outcome and payment status
- Project milestones — Our End & Client End tracking
- Multiple businesses / ventures per install
- Scheduling — day, week and month diary
- Accounts — income, expenditure and summaries
- Invoicing with document and letter templates
- Mileage log & Self Assessment summary
- Stock & materials management
- Professional development log
- Audit search & project milestone search
- Client enquiry widget — embed on your website
- Multi-user with tiered access levels
- AES-256-CBC field-level encryption — switchable in Setup
- Import / export — CSV in and out
- Database backup built in
Full feature list → ·
Gallery → ·
Try the SoleTrader demo →
What’s new in 2026
Financial Flow — how it all connects
All our management software; SoleTrader, CrystalSolutions & PraxisClinic give you a joined-up financial picture from session, job or treatment to tax summary. Here’s how the pieces fit together.
Sessions — the starting point
Every treatment session or job can carry a fee and a paid/unpaid status.
This is your working record of what was done and what was charged — not
your accounts, but the source from which accounts can be built.
Sessions or jobs with a fee and no income entry show in the Outstanding Payments
panel on your business/practice dashboard and audit sidebar.
Invoices — for patients or clients who need to be billed
If a patient or client pays later or needs a formal invoice, raise one
directly from the session (pre-filled) or create one independently from Invoices → + New Invoice. Invoices track draft → sent → paid status and generate a printable PDF document. Outstanding invoices appear on your Welcome Dashboard, the Audit sidebar and the Invoices list ⚠ Unpaid filter — so nothing gets forgotten.
Accounts — the source of truth
Income and expenditure you actually want to count — for
reconciliation, for your accountant, and for tax. A session or invoice
only enters your accounts when you deliberately bridge it using the 💰 Add to Income
button. This is intentional: cash payments, barter, or informally
settled sessions can sit as session records without forcing themselves
into your tax figures until you decide they belong there.
Tax Summary — year-end view
Pulls everything from Accounts on a cash basis. Expenditure,
mileage claim and net profit — all filterable by UK tax year (6 Apr–5
Apr). The quarterly MTD breakdown gives you Q1–Q4 figures with
submission dates, usable independently, via your accountant, or directly
to UK HMRC. The CSV export is the file to hand your accountant at year
end.
Four ways to record income
Path 1 — Session only (simplest, cash/card on the day): Record the session or job → tick Paid → 💰 Add to Income → save in Accounts.
Path 2 — Session → Invoice → Accounts (invoiced work): Record the session → 🧾 Raise Invoice → send → mark paid → 💰 Add to Income.
Path 3 — Invoice only (no session needed): Invoices → + New Invoice → mark paid → 💰 Add to Income.
Path 4 — Direct receipt (quickest): Accounts → Income → + Add Receipt. No session or invoice needed.
OUR FINANCIAL AUDIT TRAIL
1/ Sessions Jobs and invoices can stay out of any formal financial audit requirement — they’re workings, not accounting entries.
2/ The income record created via 💰 Add to Income is the official entry.(shows who added and when)
3/ Account records can though be deleted by admin
but “soft delete” means records don’t vanish without trace, as our “created_at” gives a timestamp in setup/activity — which has a new Financial Entries section below the login log, showing two columns (Income / Expenditure), recent entries with who added them, and when (with detailed timestamp); deleted entries in strikethrough with who deleted and when, filterable by day range. Admin only.
_____________
Five Elements Pulses & Astrology module — CrystalSolutions & PraxisClinic
Patient Page 5 now generates a full constitutional profile from the date of birth — combining Chinese animal sign, element, Yin/Yang polarity and trine group into descriptive clinical cards. The western astrology tab shows sign, element, modality and group alongside a full element description. The Indian tab provides a western/Vedic correspondence table with the correctly calculated Chinese sign shown separately.
The module can be used alongside Applied Kinesiology and muscle testing as a framework for prioritising areas of clinical inquiry. All profiles are starting points for clinical reflection — not diagnostic tools.
Five Elements information page → ·
Free standalone calculator (no login needed) →
Making Tax Digital — all three products
All three applications include an optional MTD module for direct HMRC submission via OAuth2. Your HMRC credentials are never stored by the software — you authorise directly on HMRC’s own website. Quarterly figures are pulled automatically from your accounts and submitted with one click. Our application for HMRC production credentials is at resubmission stage.
Easy Install — Docker, Mac & Windows
All three products now include a Docker Easy Install option — a one-click installer for Mac and Windows that sets up the complete application including database, with no technical knowledge required. Also works on Synology NAS via Container Manager, Raspberry Pi and Linux servers.
Hosting & installation options
A new page covers the full range of installation options — from MAMP/XAMPP local install, through Docker, NAS, shared hosting and VPS. All hosted software carries some risk, but our optional field-level encryption means that even if a server is compromised, sensitive records remain unreadable. For practitioners and sole traders in regulated or sensitive sectors, that’s the difference between a data breach and a near-miss.
Pricing
- CrystalSolutions — £65 one-off · no subscriptions · free updates
- PraxisClinic — £65 one-off · no subscriptions · free updates
- SoleTrader — £45 one-off · no subscriptions · free updates
Try before you buy — all demos are free, fully working and run in your browser with no installation needed. Install first, use free with up to 10 records, then buy when you’re ready.
Questions welcome on the forum or via the contact page.