Phila
For South African counselling organisations

Run the practice.
Hold the whole journey.

The calm operating system for counselling teams booking, sessions, the team and its documents, invoicing, and funder reporting in one place. The reporting falls out of the work instead of being a second job.

  • POPIA-grade by design
  • Client data stays in South Africa
  • No medical-aid claims, ever
philasa.com/app
The daily loop

The clinical work is the product. Reporting is its by-product.

A counsellor opens Phila ten times a day because the loop calendar to session to note is faster than anything else they could reach for. Everything else is built around that.

01

Open the day

The calendar, the caseload, and what needs you one glance, one tap. The session you're in is right there.

02

Hold the session

Type alongside the room live notes that autosave and never block. In person or online, it's the same calm surface.

03

Sign the note

An AI draft you read, edit, and sign you're the author of record. The structured fields feed reporting with zero double entry.

The day, held

Every counsellor's day, calm and in one place

  • Calendar, caseload, and the session you're in no hunting.
  • Live in-session notes that autosave and never block.
  • Mark done, no-show, or postponed; the thread just updates.

Today5

08:30
Lerato Mahlangu
Completed
Room 1
09:45
Sipho Khumalo
In session
Room 1
11:00
Fatima Adams
Upcoming
Online
The org, in view

Programme-grade oversight the incumbents can't show

  • Every counsellor's calendar, rooms, and utilisation at a glance.
  • Intake, invoicing, and team roles with honest permissions.
  • Income prediction and no-show rate from the real schedule.
184
Clients this week
across 6 counsellors
6%
No-show rate
this month
72%
Room use
2 sites

Appointments

Nomsa Dlamini82%
Thabo Mokoena64%
Aisha Patel48%
Proof, without the second job

Funder and demographic reporting that writes itself

  • Indicators roll up live from the clinical work no double entry.
  • Consent-gated, k-anonymised, audited nothing identifiable.
  • One click to the funder's template; the report is just there.

Grant indicators

k-anon · audited
Unique clients reached312 / 300
Female participants58% / 60%
Improved ≥5 on PHQ-971% / 70%

Small cells suppressed a funder can never re-identify a client.

The whole practice

One calm place not seven tools that don't talk

Today it's a scheduler in one tab, a WhatsApp group in another, a Dropbox folder, a spreadsheet, and a separate invoice tool none of them aware of each other. Phila is the one place where they are.

Booking & intake

A public page clients book from service, time, consent, done. No back-and-forth.

Team messaging

Private staff chat, groups, and who's online handovers and supervision in one place.

Documents & sharing

Folders, share with a client, request a file one home for every document, no more Dropbox.

Invoicing & PayShap

A4 invoices, pay-by-link, VAT the SA way clients pay the practice directly.

Reminders on WhatsApp

Booked, reminded, rescheduled on the channel your clients actually live on.

AI scribe

A note draft you edit and sign and its structured fields feed your reporting.

Video sessions

Online sessions in-app and in-region, or paste your own Zoom, Meet, or Teams link.

Rooms & utilisation

Every room, who's in it, and how full it is across sites, with no double-booking.

And it's one system a booking mints a room, a reminder, and an invoice; a signed note feeds the funder report. Nothing re-typed, nothing out of sync.

For the people you serve

Your clients get a calm, private space not a portal they dread.

Booking that takes two taps, reminders where they already are, and a private home for their whole journey. The care is yours Phila just makes it feel effortless for them.

  • Book in a couple of taps
    From your public page, on a phone, on metered data service, time, consent, done.
  • Reminders on WhatsApp
    Booked, reminded, rescheduled on the channel they already use every day.
  • A private space of their own
    Their sessions, documents, invoices, and the next steps their counsellor chooses to share.
  • Crisis help, one tap away
    SADAG front and centre a person in distress is never left to hunt for support.
philasa.com/me
Your next session
Wed 3 Jul · 10:00
with Nomsa · online · in 2 days
Join

Your steps

2 of 3 done
Try the breathing exercise before bed
Note one thing that went well each day
Read the worksheet Nomsa shared
If you need to talk now

SADAG · 0800 567 567 free, any time. You never have to hunt for help.

For funders

Give funders live proof without giving away a single client.

Invite a funder to a portal scoped to their grant. They watch indicators move against targets in real time the same numbers that fall out of your counsellors' daily work. No spreadsheets, no quarter-end scramble, no identifiable client ever in view.

  • Read-only & scoped
    A funder sees only their own grant never another, never the org's inner workings.
  • Nothing identifiable
    Aggregate, k-anonymised, consent-gated. Small cells are suppressed, not shown.
  • Every view audited
    The org controls exactly what each funder sees, and every view is recorded.
philasa.com/funder
DSD Community Wellness Grant
Apr–Jun 2026 · quarterly report
Aggregate · anonymised

Indicators vs target

Unique clients reached312 / 300
Female participants58% / 60%
Improved ≥5 on PHQ-971% / 70%
Sessions delivered1840 / 1800

412 of 530 clients have consented demographics.

Trust is the product

Built for the most sensitive data there is

Counselling notes, demographics, sometimes GBV survivors under POPIA, all of it is special personal information. Phila treats it that way from the first commit, not as a launch checklist.

Data stays in South Africa

Client PII rests in an SA region before launch. AI inference is de-identified before any cross-border call, on a zero-retention provider audio is never stored.

Consent before capture

Every purpose notes, demographics, comms, AI, funder reporting is independently granted, versioned, and revocable. Off means nothing leaves.

Audited by design

Every read of a note, contact, or demographic writes an audit row. The Hub seeing a note is a recorded access never silent.

Tenant isolation

Every query is bounded to its org by Postgres row-level security the database itself refuses a cross-org row, not just the app.

Encrypted where it counts

ID numbers and special-category fields are encrypted at the field level. We never store sensitive data in the clear.

Compliance you can show

A one-click POPIA pack consent records, lawful basis, audit, retention ready for the Information Regulator.

Who it's for

Built for organisations the billing incumbents serve badly

Not a medical-aid claims tool, and not a solo-therapist scheduler. Phila is for multi-counsellor organisations that bill clients directly and it scales down to a single practice as the entry tier.

Community & NGO counselling

Multi-counsellor teams serving clients directly, with funders to report to and demographics to track.

EAP & corporate wellness

Employee-assistance providers running caseloads across employers, with utilisation and outcomes to show.

University & student services

Campus counselling centres with high volume, intake forms, and waitlists to manage calmly.

Faith-based & community services

Mission-driven services that bill clients directly and scale down to a single practice.

“Friday afternoons used to mean rebuilding the quarter from memory who we saw, what changed, what each funder still needs. The reporting was a second job. Phila just has it.”

The week we built Phila to give back to counselling teams.

Bring calm to your counselling practice.

We'll walk you through Phila with your own services, intake, and reporting in mind and set it up with you. No obligation, no pressure.