Inpatient Bill Refunds

Introduction

An inpatient refund returns money already collected against a BHT — a deposit no longer needed, an overpayment, or a payment taken in error. A refund is always raised against the original payment or deposit bill; you cannot refund a free-standing amount.

Two different things are both called "refund" in the inpatient module, and they are handled on different screens:

	Refunding money collected	Returning a charge
What it reverses	An inward payment or deposit bill	Items on an inward service or outside-charge bill
Screen	Inward Refund Payment (inward/inward_bill_refund.xhtml)	Return on the Service Reprint screen
Documented at	This page	Inpatient Service Bills

Where to Find It

Main Menu → Payments → Cash → Cash For Receive, then Refund. The same screen also hosts Payment, Payment Search and Refund Search for inpatients.

The menu item needs the Payment privilege; the Refund button itself needs InwardBilling, and the search buttons need InwardBillSearch.

A refund can also be started from the bill being refunded: open a deposit through Deposit Search → Deposit Reprint and click Refund there, which carries the original bill across for you.

There is no Inward → Billing → Bill Refund menu path, and no Issue Refund button on the admission screens. An older Inward Deposit submenu containing these items exists in the menu source but is permanently switched off.

Issuing a Refund

1. Open the Inward Refund Payment screen.
2. Find the patient by name or BHT number and select the admission.
3. Select the original payment or deposit bill to refund. Change Bill swaps to a different one.
4. Enter the refund details — amount and payment method.
5. Click Refund and confirm the "Process this refund?" prompt.
6. The refund receipt is shown for printing.

Clear / New Bill abandons what is on screen and starts again.

Where the admission's payment has already been finalised, the screen applies additional checks before allowing the refund, and credit admissions are treated differently from cash ones.

Partial Refunds

You do not have to refund a payment or deposit in one go. A payment of Rs. 2,000 can be refunded as Rs. 1,500 now and Rs. 500 later; each refund is its own bill linked back to the original. The Inward Refund Payment screen pre-fills the remaining refundable balance (original amount minus everything already refunded against it) as the amount, and blocks a refund that would exceed that balance.

The Refund button on Deposit Reprint / Payment Reprint stays available for as long as a refundable balance remains, so you can come back to the same bill for the rest:

After refunding Rs. 1,500 of a Rs. 2,000 deposit, Refund is still enabled (Rs. 500 outstanding). To Cancel is greyed out — once any refund exists the deposit can no longer be cancelled outright.

Once the whole amount has been refunded, Refund greys out:

With the full Rs. 2,000 refunded across two bills, both Refund and To Cancel are disabled.

Every refund against the bill is listed on the admission's Deposits & Payments tab alongside the original:

The Rs. 2,000 deposit (Inward//26/050558) with its two partial refunds of −1,500 and −500.

What a Refund Creates

Attribute	Value
Bill type	InwardPaymentBill
Atomic bill type	INWARD_DEPOSIT_REFUND when the original was a deposit, otherwise INWARD_PAYMENT_REFUND

The refund is a bill in its own right, linked to the bill it reverses — the original is not edited or deleted.

Finding, Reprinting or Cancelling a Refund

• Refund Search (Payments → Cash → Cash For Receive → Refund Search) lists refunds by date, bill number, BHT, patient name, MRN/PHN or value; from a result, Reprint opens the refund receipt
• A refund issued in error is itself cancelled on inward/inward_cancel_bill_refund.xhtml; see Inpatient — Bill Cancellations and Refunds (Overview)

Refunding a Deposit

Deposits taken through Make a Deposit are refunded the same way, and the resulting bill is marked INWARD_DEPOSIT_REFUND so deposit refunds stay distinguishable from payment refunds in reports. The most direct route is Deposit Search → Deposit Reprint → Refund; the deposit can be refunded in one go or in parts (see Partial Refunds above). The same screen's To Cancel cancels the deposit outright instead, which is the right action when the deposit should never have been taken at all — but only while the deposit is untouched; as soon as any refund has been raised against it, To Cancel is disabled and the balance must be returned through Refund.

See Inpatient — Make a Payment and Make a Deposit and BHT Deposits.

Where Refunds Show Up

Refunds are cash-out transactions: they reduce the day's collected total in the cashier's shift summary and appear in the deposit and payment reports for the admission alongside the bills they reverse. On the Inpatient Dashboard, Payments & Cancellations lists an admission's payment bills together with their cancellations and refunds.

Technical Reference

Item	Detail
Refund page	inward/inward_bill_refund.xhtml
Controller	InwardRefundController
Refund search	inward/inward_search_refund.xhtml
Refund reprint	inward/inward_reprint_bill_refund.xhtml
Refund cancellation	inward/inward_cancel_bill_refund.xhtml
Deposit search / reprint	inward/inward_search_deposit.xhtml, inward/inward_reprint_bill_deposit.xhtml
Service-bill return (different flow)	inward/inward_bill_service_refund.xhtml, InwardServiceRefundController
BillType	InwardPaymentBill
BillTypeAtomic	INWARD_PAYMENT_REFUND, INWARD_DEPOSIT_REFUND

Related Pages

• Inpatient — Make a Payment and Make a Deposit — collecting the money in the first place
• BHT Deposits · Inpatient — Patient Deposits
• Inpatient Service Bills — returning charges rather than money
• Inpatient — Bill Cancellations and Refunds (Overview)
• Inpatient Final Bill — where an over-collection usually becomes visible