Voiding a receipt
A receipt issued in error is voided, never deleted. It needs a reason and, usually, somebody else to authorise it.
2 min read
When to void
A receipt issued in error: wrong patient, wrong amount, issued twice, or the payment did not actually happen.
Not for a refund. A patient who paid correctly and is getting money back is a refund, which is its own transaction. Voiding their receipt would say the payment never happened, which is false and would leave your till wrong.
How
Find the receipt — on the patient's Payments tab or in Billing / Cashier — and choose Void.
You must give a reason, and it is kept and reported. "Error" is not a reason. "Issued against the wrong patient, correct receipt 4119" is.
You must name an authoriser. A cashier can void their own receipt but cannot authorise it, so the dialog asks who did — normally the Facility Manager or Accounts. Both names end up on the record. Ask first; naming somebody who did not agree is worse than the mistake you are correcting.
What happens
The receipt stays. It is marked void, with the reason, who voided it and who authorised it. The number is consumed for ever — it is never reissued — and it appears on the missing-numbers report as a void rather than as a gap, which is exactly what it is.
If the patient still owes the money, take a fresh receipt for the corrected amount. A void does not correct an amount; it says the receipt should not have existed.
The payment comes out of the balance, so what the patient owes goes back up, and your till expectation drops by the same amount if it was cash.
Voids are watched, and should be
The number of voids appears in the daily brief every morning. Not because voids are wrong — mistakes happen at a busy desk — but because voiding a receipt is how cash would be taken if anybody were going to take it. A few voids with clear reasons is a hospital working normally. A pattern of voids around one person, or reasons that say nothing, is what the figure is there to surface.