Payments, refunds, and credit notes

Every rupee that comes in or goes out of the clinic is recorded against an invoice. You take money with Record Payment, give it back with Process Refund, and reverse a charge that should never have been made with a credit note. Each of those actions moves the invoice's status, writes a line in the accounting ledger, and leaves a trail in the audit log.

How an invoice's status moves

You never set an invoice's status by hand. Recording a payment, refunding one, or cancelling the bill moves it for you. The status also decides which buttons you see when you open the invoice.

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Record a payment

1. 1

   Open the invoice.

   From Billing → Invoices, search by invoice number or patient name and click the row. The Outstanding Invoices panel on the Billing Dashboard is a faster route to whoever owes you money.

2. 2

   Click Record Payment.

   It sits at the top right of the invoice, beside Download PDF.

3. 3

   Check the Amount.

   It is pre-filled with the whole outstanding balance, and Amount due: ₹X is printed under the box. Type a smaller figure if the patient is paying only part of the bill.

4. 4

   Choose the Payment Method.

   Cash, Card, UPI, Bank Transfer or Cheque.

5. 5

   Add a Transaction Reference (Optional).

   The UPI transaction ID, the card slip number, the cheque number. Nothing forces you to fill it in, but a payment you cannot trace back is a payment you cannot defend at audit time.

6. 6

   Add Notes (Optional) and click Record Payment.

   A Payment recorded successfully toast appears, the payment lands under Payment History, and the Summary panel recalculates Paid and Amount Due.

Amount

Required. Pre-filled with the amount due. You cannot take more than is due — the server rejects it with Payment amount (x) exceeds amount due (y).

Payment Method

Cash, Card, UPI, Bank Transfer or Cheque. This is what the Payment Method Breakdown in Billing reports counts.

Transaction Reference (Optional)

Free text, e.g. a UPI transaction ID. It shows under the payment in Payment History as Ref: <reference> and prints on the invoice PDF.

Notes (Optional)

Anything the next person to open this invoice should know — 'paid by the patient's son', 'cheque yet to clear'.

Part payments

A patient can settle a ₹2,000 bill in three goes, and you record three payments. Each one is listed separately under Payment History with its own amount, method, reference and timestamp — and the status looks after itself.

• Record ₹500 against a pending ₹2,000 invoice → the invoice becomes partial, Amount Due reads ₹1,500.
• Record ₹1,000 more → still partial, Amount Due reads ₹500.
• Record the last ₹500 → the invoice flips to paid and the Record Payment button disappears.

What a payment sets off elsewhere

Refunds

A refund gives money back against a payment that was actually taken. Process Refund only appears when the invoice status is exactly paid — a partial invoice cannot be refunded from the screen, so either collect the balance first, or cancel the invoice instead.

1. 1

   Open the paid invoice and click Process Refund.

2. 2

   Choose Full Refund or Partial Refund.

   The toggle only appears when the invoice carries more than one payment. Full Refund shows a Refund breakdown — every payment with its method and date, and Total to refund — and gives back the lot. When there is a single payment, the Refund Amount is pre-filled with it and you can reduce it.

3. 3

   On a partial refund, pick the payment under Select Payment.

   Refunds are always made against one specific payment — the ₹500 cash, not the ₹1,000 UPI — and cannot exceed what that payment was worth.

4. 4

   Type a Reason for Refund.

   Mandatory. It is stored with the refund and shown in the audit log, so write something a colleague reading it in six months will understand: 'Consultation cancelled by clinic', not 'refund'.

5. 5

   Click Process Refund.

   The toast confirms the amount refunded. Paid falls in the Summary panel, and the invoice becomes refunded if nothing is left paid, or drops back to partial if part of the money is still with you.

• Only completed payments can be refunded — anything else is refused with Can only refund completed payments.
• Refunds against a payment can never add up to more than that payment: Refund amount exceeds available payment amount.
• Refunding an invoice that came from a consultation resets the prescription to unbilled, so the pharmacist can no longer dispense against it.

Credit notes

A credit note cancels part or all of an invoice without touching the original invoice. The bill you handed the patient stays exactly as it was printed; the credit note sits beside it as a separate document, numbered CN-000001, CN-000002 and upwards. That is the accounting-clean way to reverse a charge — an item billed twice, a procedure that was not performed, a price keyed in wrong on a bill that has already left the building. Credited medicine and supply lines go back into stock.

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Finding a credit note

Search by credit note #, patient, or invoice…

Matches the credit note number, the patient's name, or the number of the invoice it was raised against.

All Status

Draft (not yet issued), Issued (the normal state — a live credit against the invoice), Applied (used up against a bill), Cancelled. The Clear button resets the search and the filter together.

Cancelling an invoice

Cancel appears on every invoice that is not paid or cancelled. Click it and confirm in the Cancel Invoice dialog — the wording is blunt on purpose: Are you sure you want to cancel this invoice? This action cannot be undone.

• The invoice becomes cancelled and can never take a payment again.
• Any pending payments on it are cancelled with it.
• Any stock the invoice had deducted is returned to inventory.
• A linked prescription drops back to unbilled, so the pharmacist can no longer dispense against it.

How it all lands in the ledger

The Accounting Ledger (Billing → Ledger) is written for you — nobody can add or edit an entry from any screen — and it is the one place where the clinic's whole money story sits in date order, with a running Balance after every line.

Filter the ledger to Debit or Credit only, set a From and a To date, and the Total Debits, Total Credits, Net Balance and Total Entries cards recalculate across that whole period — not just the page you are looking at. Entries are shown 30 to a page; Clear removes every filter.

Questions people ask