Closing the day at the clinic front desk. Reconciling cash, UPI and card, every evening.

Close the day every day, at the desk, before the last person leaves. Count the cash, match each UPI credit to a visit, settle the card machine, write the float for tomorrow, list every mismatch with a reason, and have two people sign. It takes fifteen minutes on a normal day. Skipping it does not save fifteen minutes; it moves the work to the month end, when nobody remembers which patient paid on the doctor's personal number.

Why the day must be closed every day

The owner's reason is simple. Cash that is not counted today cannot be reconstructed next week. A ₹300 difference on Tuesday is a counting error; the same ₹300 found on the 30th is a dispute between the owner and the receptionist with no evidence on either side. A daily close also tells the owner whether the clinic is actually collecting the fees the doctor is charging, which is a different number from the fees written on the parchi.

The CA's reason is different. At year end the CA needs receipts that tie to bank credits and a cash book that tie to the drawer. If the UPI credits in the bank statement are more than the recorded consultations, the gap is unexplained income. If they are less, the gap is unexplained expenditure or a patient who paid someone other than the clinic. Both are questions the CA will ask, and a daily sheet answers them one day at a time instead of one year at a time.

The three streams and what proves each

Two rules follow from this table. First, the UPI QR on the desk must be the clinic's, tied to the clinic's current account, not the doctor's personal number. Second, the card machine's end-of-day batch must be closed by the desk, every day, so that the slip and the bank credit refer to the same set of transactions. When the batch settles into the bank depends on your merchant agreement with the acquiring bank; read it once and write the timing on the closing sheet.

The closing procedure, step by step

1. Print or open the day's visit list with the fee, the mode and the amount against each patient. This list, not any app, is the base for the close.
2. Count the drawer by denomination. Write the total. Subtract the opening float. The remainder is today's cash collection.
3. Compare today's cash collection with the sum of visits marked cash. Note the difference, if any, with a sign (short or over).
4. Open the bank's UPI credit list for the day. Tick each credit against a visit marked UPI. Do not compare totals; compare lines. An untickable credit and an unticked visit are both mismatches, even when the totals happen to agree.
5. Close the card machine's batch and print the settlement slip. Compare the slip's count and amount with the visits marked card.
6. Write the float you are leaving for tomorrow, by denomination, and lock it separately from the cash being banked or handed over.
7. For every mismatch, write the reason if known, or 'unknown' if not. Never adjust an entry to make the total match. A wrong reason can be corrected tomorrow; a quietly edited entry cannot.
8. Two signatures: the person who counted and the owner or doctor in charge. If the owner is not present, a photo of the signed sheet on WhatsApp to the owner, the same evening.

The common mismatches and what causes them

A daily closing sheet

One A4 page a day is enough. Fill it in the order the steps above run. The figures below are a layout, not a clinic's numbers.

The weekly and monthly roll-up for the CA

Weekly, the owner reads seven sheets and clears the pending list: who still owes, who was waived, which mismatches stayed 'unknown'. Monthly, three totals go to the CA: cash collected, UPI collected, card collected, each with the sum of refunds and the sum of waivers. The CA ties cash to the cash book, UPI and card to the bank statement. Keep the signed sheets in a file by month. If the clinic uses software, export the month's payments as a CSV with the mode on every line, so the CA can filter rather than retype.

The tax and GST points a clinic can rely on

The Income-tax Act, 2025 came into force on 1 April 2026 (section 1(3)). Two of its provisions decide how much cash a clinic may take and pay.

Receiving cash. Section 186(1): no person shall receive an amount of ₹2,00,000 or more in aggregate from a person in a day, in respect of a single transaction, or in respect of transactions relating to one event or occasion from a person, except through an account payee cheque, account payee bank draft, electronic clearing system through a bank account, or any other prescribed electronic mode. The limit is per person and per event, so a procedure billed at ₹2,50,000 and paid in cash across three days is still a breach. Section 451 lets the Assessing Officer impose a penalty equal to the sum received.

Paying cash. Section 36(4): where any payment or aggregate of payments made in a day to a person for an expenditure exceeds ₹10,000 and is not made through specified banking or online mode, that expenditure is not allowed as a deduction. The figure reads as ₹35,000 for hiring goods carriages (s.36(6)), and prescribed exceptions exist (s.36(7)). For a clinic this covers the rent, the salary, the consumables supplier and the AMC vendor: pay each by bank, or keep each cash payment to one person under ₹10,000 in a day.

GST on consultations. Serial number 74 of Notification No. 12/2017-Central Tax (Rate), 28 June 2017, exempts 'health care services by a clinical establishment, an authorised medical practitioner or para-medics' at a Nil rate. The notification defines a clinical establishment to include 'a hospital, nursing home, clinic, sanatorium or any other institution' offering diagnosis, treatment or care in a recognised system of medicine in India, and defines health care services to exclude 'hair transplant or cosmetic or plastic surgery, except when undertaken to restore or to reconstruct anatomy or functions of body affected due to congenital defects, developmental abnormalities, injury or trauma'.

GST registration. Under section 22(1) of the CGST Act, 2017, a supplier is liable to register when aggregate turnover in a financial year exceeds ₹20 lakh (₹10 lakh for the special category States named in the section). Under section 23(1)(a), a person 'engaged exclusively in the business of supplying goods or services or both that are not liable to tax or wholly exempt from tax' is not liable to register. A clinic that sells medicines, runs a cosmetic line or rents out a room is no longer exclusively exempt; that is the point to take to the CA, with the monthly roll-up in hand.

Where Vitels fits

In Vitels the desk records each payment as cash, UPI or card at the time of the visit, and the Today's Collection view shows the three totals the closing sheet starts from. Reports are split by doctor and export to CSV, so the monthly roll-up for the CA is a download rather than a retype; the bank matching itself is still done by a person, line by line. Clinic owners see the same numbers the desk sees.