Settling a Channel Booking Payment - hmislk/hmis GitHub Wiki

Settling a Channel Booking Payment

Overview

When a patient books a channel appointment as OnCall (payment deferred to arrival), the front desk collects payment later and "settles" the booking against the appointment. Settling turns the on-call booking into a paid appointment and prints a receipt. This page also covers what to do if you see a "Payment Already Settled." message.

When to Use

  • A patient booked earlier with an OnCall payment method and has now arrived to pay.
  • You need to look up whether a specific past booking has already been paid.
  • You clicked Settle and received an unexpected "already settled" message and want to understand why.

How to Use

Finding the Booking

For a booking made today, use Channel Booking — By Dates and select the session directly.

For a booking from an earlier date, use Past Bookings:

  1. Menu → Channelling → Past Bookings
  2. Select the appointment date using the Select the Past Date calendar.
  3. Choose the doctor's Speciality (or leave on All).
  4. Choose the Consultant (doctor) from the staff list.
  5. Choose the session for that doctor and date from the sessions list.
  6. Click Manage Booking for the session, then select the specific patient's booking row.

Settling the Payment

  1. On the booking's Settle tab, review the Patient Details and Bill Details panels (patient name, bill number, total).
  2. Choose the payment method (Cash, Card, Credit, etc.) and click Settle.
  3. On success, the page shows a green Payment Settled confirmation and prints the receipt.

Important: Click Settle only once and wait for the confirmation panel before doing anything else. Clicking it a second time, or clicking it twice in quick succession, no longer creates a duplicate paid bill — the system checks whether the booking was already paid and blocks a repeat settlement (see below).

Understanding Messages

Success Messages

  • "On Call Channel Booking Settled": The payment was recorded and the receipt is ready to print.

Informational Messages

  • "Payment Already Settled.": This booking already has a completed payment. No new bill is created and no money is charged again. This is expected if:

    • You already settled this exact booking earlier (check the Bill Details panel — the Bill ID and Total shown are from the original settlement).
    • Someone else settled it in the meantime.
    • You clicked Settle more than once on the same booking.

    If you believe this is wrong (the patient says they haven't paid), check Channel Bill Search or Past Bookings for the booking's payment history before re-attempting anything, and confirm with the cashier who processed it.

Error Messages

  • "Settlement using 'On Call' is not allowed. Please select a different payment method.": You must pick an actual payment method (Cash, Card, Credit, etc.) — OnCall itself is not a valid settlement method.
  • "This session has already been rescheduled. Please pay to the active session.": The original session was moved. Find the patient's current (rescheduled) session and settle there instead.
  • "Agency Balance is Not Enough": The referring agency's credit balance cannot cover this booking. Contact finance/administration before proceeding.
  • "Please select Agency": You chose the Agent payment method but didn't pick which agency — select one from the dropdown.

Troubleshooting

Problem: I settled a booking but the income report total looks higher than expected

Symptoms: A daily income report shows more cash/card collected for a session than what the cashier actually received. Cause: In the past, a double-click (or two rapid attempts) on Settle could occasionally create two paid bills for the same booking before the safeguard existed, inflating totals in some reports even though only one payment was actually collected. Solution: This is now prevented — a second settle attempt on an already-paid booking is rejected with "Payment Already Settled." and creates no new bill. If you see a mismatch on data from before this safeguard was in place, report it to administration with the bill number and date so it can be checked and corrected.

Problem: The Settle button doesn't respond after I click it

Symptoms: Nothing appears to happen after clicking Settle. Cause: The page is processing the request. This can take a few seconds. Solution: Wait for the page to respond rather than clicking Settle again — clicking repeatedly does not speed this up and, before the safeguard above, is exactly what could cause the duplicate-bill issue.

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