Taking Payments
Money is recorded against an appointment (or a physiotherapy session). Each payment you record updates that appointment's payment status and posts its own accounting entry, with nothing further to do.
Where a visit has physiotherapy sessions filed under it, the appointment shows one bill for the whole visit — see One Bill Per Visit.
Where to Find It
Click an address to open that screen on your own clinic. The first click asks which clinic you are, then remembers it. Addresses holding a {id} or {token} need a specific record, so they are shown but not linked.
| Screen | Address |
|---|---|
| Appointment list — open the appointment to pay | /all-appointment |
| Appointment page, where Add Payment lives | /show-appointment/{id} |
| Receipt | /payment/{id} |
| Physiotherapy session and its payments | /patient/{patient_id}/physio/sessions/{session_id} |
| One bill per visit — the switch | /appointment-settings |
| Who still owes money | /patient-receivables-report |
| Everything one patient owes, and paying it | /patient/{id}/dues — see Patient Dues |
Which Drawer It Landed In
Every payment now also records the cashier shift it was taken during — the drawer, and therefore the person answerable for it. See Cashier Shifts.
You do not choose it. The system stamps the shift you have open when you record the payment, and it never changes afterwards: closing the shift and opening the next one leaves the payment exactly where it was.
If you have no shift open, the form says so before you save. Depending on what the clinic set, that is either a note (the payment saves and belongs to no shift) or a refusal until you open one. Payments recorded before your clinic started using shifts belong to none, which is simply true.
Everything a Patient Owes, on One Page
When the patient at the desk asks what they owe, don't open their visits one by one. Add payment in the header of the patient's file opens Patient Dues. It lists every unpaid appointment, session and invoice, with a payment button on each. From there you can also:
- pay everything at once (Pay all), oldest first;
- pay a few records you tick;
- print or send the receipt;
- give a discount or write a debt off;
- print the patient's statement.
Where to Record a Payment
Open the appointment — Appointment → All Appointment, or today's board — and use Add Payment in the header.
You can also take the first payment while booking: the appointment form itself carries the same payment fields, so a deposit taken at the desk is captured in one step.
Paying while you create
Three screens create the record and take its first payment together: Advance Reservation, a new session, and a new invoice you write by hand. Each shows Add payment instead of an amount box. It opens the payment form below — amount, method, date, note — and tap the total shown there to pay it in full. Saving the dialog does not record anything yet: the payment shows in place of the button, with ✎ to change it and ✕ to take it back, and is recorded the moment you save the booking, session or invoice. An invoice drafted from a visit or session has no button: that money is taken on the visit or session itself.
A new invoice starts as a Draft. A draft is not yet owed by the patient, so it stays out of their dues and statement. When it is complete, open it and click Issue invoice at the top. Its status becomes Issued, and from then on the patient owes it. Nothing is sent to the patient when you issue it. The same action is in the row menu on the invoice list.
WARNING
Record payments from the appointment page, not from Add Payment in the ⋮ menu on a kanban card. The card shortcut can attach the payment to the wrong appointment.
The Payment Form
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Amount * | The amount received now, not the bill total |
| Payment Method | From your clinic's Payment Methods list — the method sits beside the amount |
| Date | Defaults to today. Backdate it when entering yesterday's cash |
| Note | Free text — what the payment covers, who handed it over |
| Attachments | The receipt or transfer screenshot: JPG, PNG, GIF or PDF, up to 10 MB each |
WARNING
Attach receipts from the appointment form, not from the standalone Add Payment dialog — files chosen in that dialog are not kept. Everything else in it works normally.
The payment methods are your clinic's own list — add InstaPay or Vodafone Cash, rename, order or retire them on Payment Methods. Each shows in the language of the screen.
One Bill Per Visit
A physiotherapy visit is priced in two places: the appointment carries a fee, and each session filed under it carries its own price. Read separately they contradict each other — an appointment can read paid in full while its sessions are still hundreds short, which is exactly the number the patient is asking about at the desk.
So the appointment adds them up. Everything you see on the appointment — the paid-of-total figure, the progress bar, the payment status, the remaining amount — is the whole visit: its own fee and payments, plus every session under it and everything paid against them.
The summary says where each amount came from
A combined total nobody can trace is a total you cannot defend to a patient, so the payment summary breaks it down before it adds it up:
| Row | Amount | Paid | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|
| This visit | the appointment's own fee | what was paid against the appointment | what the appointment still owes, or Overpaid |
| Sessions (N) | the sessions' prices added together | what was paid against them | what they still owe |
| The whole visit | the two added | everything paid | the visit's real position |
A session that carries no price is noted under the sessions row: it adds nothing to the amount, though money paid against it still counts as paid. On a phone the three columns stack under each row's name, each keeping its label.
The payments tab lists the visit's payments and the sessions' payments together, and each row names the record it belongs to — This visit, or the session's own code, which is a link to that session.
Where the money is taken
The appointment can pay for any part of the visit. Use Add Payment on the appointment page. The dialog opens with a line saying what the visit as a whole is paid and still owes, and then asks what this payment is for: the visit itself, or one of its sessions by code and date. Only records that still owe anything are offered — where one record owes, it is simply stated instead of asked. Pick one and the amounts below it become that record's, so pay the rest means the rest of what you picked.
The payment is still filed against the record you chose, which is what keeps each session's own figures, its accounting entry and the reports correct. What changed is only where you type it in.
A session's own screen still takes payments — the therapist is in the room and the patient is in front of them — but it now says which visit it is billed as part of, and what that whole visit still owes, with a link to it. So money can be taken wherever it is convenient, and nobody settles a session while believing they have settled the visit.
Turning it off
The behaviour is a clinic setting: Settings → Appointment Settings → One bill per visit. It is on unless you turn it off, and it appears only in clinics that use physiotherapy.
Turned off, every screen goes back to billing the visit and its sessions apart: the appointment counts only its own money, the sessions carry their own shortfall badge in the appointment list, and a session's screen says nothing about a visit.
Changing this switch recalculates the payment status of every visit that has a session, because those statuses were answering the previous question.
Payment Status Looks After Itself
After every payment added, edited or deleted — on the visit or on any session under it — the appointment's status is recalculated against the whole visit's bill:
| Status | When |
|---|---|
| Unpaid | Nothing received |
| Partially Paid | Something received, a balance remains |
| Paid | The total is settled |
| Overpaid | More was received than the total |
| Overdue | Never set automatically — only by hand |
TIP
An appointment with no total amount goes straight to Paid on any payment, because there is no bill to compare against. If you want partial payments tracked, put the fee on the appointment when you book it.
Setting the status by hand
The status badge is also a dropdown, so you can force any of the five — this is the only way to mark something Overdue.
A treatment session has the same dropdown in its own header, and it follows the same rule: the session's status is recalculated from its own price and payments, and once its payments reach the price it turns Paid on its own.
Remember what that means: a hand-set status is overwritten the next time a payment is added or deleted, because the recalculation runs again. Use it to flag a debt, not to correct arithmetic.
The amount starts at what is owed. The Add Payment box opens with the amount already set to the remaining balance of the bill it is paying — and changes to that bill's balance if you pick another one. For a part payment, just overwrite it. With nothing owed, the box starts empty.
Reading the Payment History
The payments table on the appointment shows, per row, when it was entered, the payment date, the amount with its method right beside it, the note, and who recorded it. Its footer totals Paid against the bill Amount, then shows either Remaining or Overpaid.
A discount or write-off on the record is listed under the payments as a line of its own: what was taken off, why, by whom and when, with Undo for anyone allowed to give discounts. The footer then adds a Discount line, and Remaining is what is left after it. The bill Amount still shows the full price.
Clicking a payment opens its receipt page — every field plus the attachments, each opening in a new tab — with a View Source link back to the appointment or session it belongs to, and its own activity log.
Physiotherapy sessions carry their own payments. On a patient's file they appear marked Session Payment; on the visit they appear in the same list as the visit's own money, each row naming the session it belongs to.
Deleting a Payment
Delete removes the payment and recalculates the appointment's status. A payment that was one part of an amount spread over several records (from Pay all on the dues page) is deleted whole, from every record it reached. The delete asks you first. The accounting entry it created is cancelled rather than erased — it stays in the journal marked as cancelled, which is what keeps the books auditable.
Every add, edit and delete is written to the activity log with the amount and method, so a disputed payment can always be traced to who entered it and when.
Paying at Another Branch's Desk
A patient can settle an invoice at whichever reception desk they are standing at. The money is recorded against the invoice wherever it is taken, so an invoice raised in one location and paid in another is still fully paid — the payment is never hidden by the branch you happen to be working in.
For the reports, the split is deliberate and visible: the invoice counts as billing for the branch that raised it, and stays there. A receipt or invoice always prints the details of the branch it belongs to, not the branch of the person printing it.
What the invoice and the 80mm receipt look like is yours to change: both are print templates, so your clinic's own wording, logo and colours print on them. Reach them from Invoices → Invoice Settings in the sidebar.
What Happens in the Books
You do not need to touch the accounting screens for this, but it helps to know what each action posts:
| Action | Entry |
|---|---|
| Appointment booked with a fee | Debit Patient Receivables, credit Clinic Service Revenue — the patient now owes the clinic |
| Payment recorded | Debit the cash account matching the method, credit Patient Receivables — the debt is settled |
| Payment deleted | The entry above is cancelled |
The method decides the cash account:
- card and bank transfer land in Clinic Bank Account;
- cheques land in Digital Wallet;
- cash and other land in Clinic Cash;
- a method your clinic added lands in the ledger account chosen for it on Payment Methods.
See Journal and Chart of Accounts.
No payment without its entry
When the journal is on, a payment is saved only together with its journal entry. This applies everywhere: on an appointment, a session, a desk invoice, while booking, and on the dues page. The same goes for editing and deleting.
If the entry can't be posted, nothing is saved: no payment, no status change, nothing in the drawer. The form tells you which account is the problem, for example account 1100 is missing or inactive in the chart of accounts. Anyone who can open the chart of accounts gets a link to it.
Fix the account, then save again. Payments saved before this rule whose entry never posted are listed in Payments without entries.
Money That Does Not Come From a Patient
Rent, salaries, supplies, equipment purchases, ad-hoc income — none of that belongs on an appointment. Record it under Income & Expense.
Without Internet
Money collected during an outage is recorded on the device and reaches the books when the connection returns — dated by the day it was taken, not the day it was sent. It works against a visit and against an appointment that has not become a visit yet.
The receipt number is issued when the payment arrives at the clinic system, so a payment marked Not sent does not have one yet.
If somebody paid the same visit while you were offline, your payment is not applied on top: it is held on the Unsent work screen so you can refund it, move it, or discard it. See Working Without Internet.
When a Company Pays Part of It
Where the Insurance and contracts plugin is on and the visit is on a contract, the figure to collect is the patient's share, not the whole visit. The screen says so in three labelled lines — total, payer carries, patient carries — with collect now underneath.
Take that amount and the visit reads as paid. The company's half is not money you are short of; it is money they owe, and it is reported separately until they pay it.