Bhima is a free, open source accounting and hospital information management system (HIMS) tailored for rural hospitals in Africa. We are an international team based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The cash window is responsible for receiving payments by patients. Two kinds of payments are supported:
Both payment types generate transactions in with a record identifier CP
.
When a user first accesses the Cash Window, they will be asked to choose a cashbox to use. The cashbox selected will directly determine which cash account is used in the underlying financial transactions. Two factors determine which cashboxes a user is presented:
Cashboxes typically correspond to physical locations, and are therefore classified by project. If the desired cashbox is not in the list, confirm that the above two conditions are met for the user and cashbox.
If a user wishes to change their cashbox, they can do so by clicking Menu > Change Cashbox. This will bring up the cashbox selection modal.
A cash payment requires the following fields:
The most common payment is against one or more invoices. To create this payment, the cashier will need to choose the invoice payment** **type. Upon doing so, a button will appear with the text “Select Invoices”. Clicking this button will bring up the invoice selection modal.
Patients can only pay for invoices made against their personal account. If a patient has not been selected in the patient input, an error message will appear instructing the user to fill out that field prior to selecting invoices. If a patient has been selected, a list of zero or more unbalanced invoices will appear. If the patient has not been invoiced, or if the patient has paid all their invoices in full, their invoice list will be empty. If there are one or more unbalanced invoices, these will be listed. Selecting one or more of these invoices will queue them up for payment.
A patient is allowed to pay up to the total amount of all invoices billed. Partial payments will be allocated against each invoice from oldest to newest until the payment has been consumed. Despite paying multiple invoices, an invoice payment will always generate a single transaction containing a single line moving the total payment into the cashbox’s account and one line for each invoice paid. An example transaction for a payment against two invoices (IV.TPA.1
and IV.TPA.2
) might appear like this:
Transaction | Record | Account | Debit | Credit | Entity | Reference |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
TRANS1 | CP.TPA.1 | 570001 | $10.00 | |||
TRANS1 | CP.TPA.1 | 410001 | $4.50 | PA.HEV.1 | IV.TPA.1 | |
TRANS1 | CP.TPA.1 | 410001 | $5.50 | PA.HEV.1 | IV.TPA.2 | |
$10.00 | $10.00 | - |
In the above transaction, the cash account (570001) is debited $10.00, indicating that the patient paid money into this account. The patient’s account (410001) is credited for each invoice paid. References to the invoices are attached to the transaction on their corresponding line.
Some institutions accept prepayments. These payment are made without reference to an invoice, in anticipation of future invoices made against the patient.
As compared to invoice payments, creating a prepayment is simple. The user must select the prepayment option and enter the amount received into the cash payment form. The underlying transaction generated will contain two lines: one that debits the cash box and a second that credits the patient’s account.