The inpatient module provides dedicated cancellation and refund pages for each bill type. All cancellations require privilege and record a reason; cancelled bills are retained in the database for audit purposes.

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Bill Type	Page	Notes
Final bill	/inward/inward_cancel_bill_final.xhtml	Cancels the final bill; returns BHT to pre-settlement state
Payment bill	/inward/inward_cancel_bill_payment.xhtml	Cancels a collected payment
Professional fee bill	/inward/inward_cancel_bill_professional.xhtml	Cancels a professional fee bill
Provisional bill	/inward/inward_cancel_bill_provisional.xhtml	Cancels a provisional bill
Refund bill	/inward/inward_cancel_bill_refund.xhtml	Cancels an already-issued refund
Service bill	/inward/inward_cancel_bill_service.xhtml	Cancels a services & investigations bill
BHT bill (general)	/inward/bht_bill_cancel.xhtml	General BHT bill cancellation
Deposit payment	/inward/inward_deposit_cancel_bill_payment.xhtml	Cancels a deposit collection

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Refund Type	Page	Notes
General inpatient refund	/inward/inward_bill_refund.xhtml	Refund against a settled bill
Service bill refund	/inward/inward_bill_service_refund.xhtml	Refund for a specific service bill item — InwardServiceController

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Pharmacy-related inpatient cancellations (issue cancellations, reprint) are handled by the pharmacy module. See:

• Inward Issue Cancellation
• Inward Issue Reprint

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When a bill is cancelled:

• The bill record is flagged cancelled = true and a CancelledBill record is created — the bill itself is not deleted
• Bill items and fee lines remain retired = false so that cancellation print-outs display correctly
• A new contra-bill may be created depending on the cancellation type
• The BHT totals are recalculated

Note: Cancellation does NOT set retired = true on bill fee lines. This distinction is important for reports and print-outs — cancelled bills remain queryable.

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Once a patient's nursing discharge has been confirmed (Inward > Search > Admissions > Nursing WorkBench > Nursing Discharge), the Return and To Cancel actions on that patient's inward service bills (/inward/inward_reprint_bill_service.xhtml, reached via Inward > Search > Service Bill) are disabled by default:

Before nursing discharge: both Return and To Cancel are enabled.

After nursing discharge: To Cancel is disabled. Return stays enabled here only because this user holds the escape-hatch privilege below.

This mirrors the nursing-discharge check that already existed for Add Charges (InwardAddChargesAfterNursingDischarge). Each action has its own escape-hatch privilege for staff who genuinely need to act after nursing discharge:

Action	Escape-hatch privilege
Return	InwardProcessReturnAfterNursingDischarge
Cancel	InwardProcessCancelAfterNursingDischarge

A user without the relevant privilege sees the button disabled in the UI; the same check is enforced server-side (InwardSearch.navigateToCancelInpatientBill() / .cancelBillService(), InwardServiceRefundController.navigateToRefundInwardServiceBill() / .refundInwardServiceBill()), so the restriction cannot be bypassed by a direct form submission.

The privileges above only unlock cancel/return for a bill that is still genuinely pending — nothing has been done with it yet. They are not a blanket override. Once a lab sample has been collected from the patient, an OPD bill has started lab processing, or a surgery has been validated/closed, cancellation and return are blocked unconditionally — no privilege, including the ones above, can bypass this (issue #23576, reopened 2026-09-08 after the initial fix above missed this; the threshold was tightened from "accepted" to "sent to lab" in issue #23598, then from "sent to lab" to "sample collected" in a 2026-09-27 follow-up to #23598). Returning a collected-sample test shows Cannot return "" - the sample has already been collected for this test.; cancelling shows "This bill is processed in the Laboratory."

The "To Cancel" button is enabled here because this user holds InwardProcessCancelAfterNursingDischarge — but the bill's lab investigation has already reached SAMPLE_ACCEPTED.

Submitting the cancellation is still blocked server-side, with "This bill is processed in the Laboratory." — the privilege only covers pending bills.

Bill type	What locks it	Enforced in
Inward service bill (incl. lab/OPD investigations billed as an inward service)	Lab sample reaches SAMPLE_COLLECTED or later, or a report has been entered	InwardSearch.checkCancelBill() / .checkInvestigation() (cancel), InwardServiceRefundController.checkLabSampleGuard() (return)
OPD bill	Same lab-processing check	BillSearch.cancelOpdBill() (cancel), BillSearch.sampleHasBeenCollected() via .refundOpdBill() (return)
Surgery bill	Surgery has been validated (Bill.completed, set by Validate Surgery, InwardSurgeryValidate)	InwardSearch.cancelSurgeryBill()

A regular (non-lab) inward service that is still pending remains cancellable/returnable by a user holding the nursing-discharge escape-hatch privilege, exactly as documented above — that behavior is unchanged.

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Every cancellation records:

• Cancelling user
• Cancellation timestamp
• Reason for cancellation

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• Inpatient — Final Bill Generation — the bill being cancelled
• Inpatient — Patient Deposits — deposit cancellations
• Inpatient — Final Bill Payment — payment cancellations