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Payments is where money the lab has actually received gets written against the work it settles. It is the other half of Billing and payments: the invoice says what is owed, this screen says what came in.

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The payer is often not the patient

This is the thing a lab has to get right and a clinic never thinks about. In a diagnostic business the person who gave the specimen is frequently not the person who pays for it:
  • A DOT or workplace drug panel is almost always billed to the employer. The donor should never receive an invoice for their own regulated test.
  • A referred test is often settled by the referring practice, which bills its own patient separately.
  • Only walk-in and self-pay work is genuinely paid by the patient at the desk.
So when you record a payment, the question is not “did the patient pay” but “who owed this, and has that account settled”. Money collected here is also the base for what you owe a referring doctor, and commission is worked out on money collected, never money invoiced — see Referral commissions and Referring doctors.
The billing screens are shared across every ClinikEHR edition, so their wording is clinic-flavoured — you will see Patient on columns that, for you, may hold an employer’s account. The behaviour is the same; only the noun differs.

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What you’re looking at

The screen is headed Payments Management, with a date range picker, Refresh and New Payment across the top, and three tabs. Outstanding Balance counts everything pending and partly paid, and Oldest Item on the Pending tab is your ageing list in one column — sort your chasing by it. A voided payment stays on the list with its amount struck through and a red Voided badge; hovering the badge shows the reason someone gave. The empty state. A new lab sees No payments recorded on the Overview tiles, No payments found on Payments, and No Pending Payments on Pending. Nothing appears here until an invoice exists to settle.

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Record a payment against an invoice

The quickest route is from the invoice itself, because the amount is already known.
1

Find the invoice

On Billing Dashboard › Invoices, open the row menu for the invoice being settled and select Record Payment. The option is not offered on a cancelled invoice, or one already paid in full.
2

Check the amount

Amount is prefilled with the balance due. Leave it for a full settlement; type a smaller figure for a part payment — an employer settling half a month’s collections, for example — and the invoice moves to partly paid rather than paid.
3

Pick the method

Payment Method offers Cash, Card, Bank Transfer, Mobile Money, Insurance and Other. Choose what actually happened; this is what the Top Method tile and the method chart are built from.
4

Add a reference

Reference (optional) is the field that makes reconciliation possible later — put the bank transfer reference, the employer’s remittance number or the purchase-order number in it. Notes (optional) takes anything a colleague would need to understand the payment.
5

Save it

The toast reads Payment recorded, the invoice balance drops, and the payment appears on the Payments tab.
Use New Payment on this screen instead when money arrives without an invoice in front of you — a walk-in paying at the desk, or an account settling several items at once. That opens the fuller payment screen, where you choose the payer and tick the items being paid for.

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Void a payment taken in error

1

Open the payment

On the Payments tab, open the row menu and select Void Payment.
2

Say why

The dialog asks Void this payment? and explains what will happen — the payment is marked voided and the invoice balance is restored. Give a reason; the placeholder suggests “e.g. Recorded in error — already paid by card”.
3

Confirm

The toast reads Payment voided. The row stays visible, struck through and badged Voided — the record is kept for your books and audit trail rather than deleted.

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Who can do this

Role decides whether the money screens open at all; the Diagnostics permission list governs bench and referrer work, not billing. So the table below is mostly role-driven, and that surprises people who expect a switch for it. A lab scientist does not reach the billing screens, and a QC Officer is review-only by design. Two behaviours catch people out:
  • Enforcement is opt-in, per person. Someone never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing”.
  • A denied action is recorded; an allowed one is not. A figure you are not entitled to see renders hidden or as a dash — never as a zero.
See Permissions.

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Check it worked

  • The payment appears on the Payments tab with the right Method and Reference, and names you under Received By.
  • The invoice’s balance has fallen by the amount you recorded, and its status has moved.
  • The payer has dropped off the Pending tab, or their Total Pending has fallen.
  • Total Collected on Overview has risen by the same amount.

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Common issues

The invoice is cancelled, or already settled in full. A cancelled invoice cannot take money; raise a corrected one.
Voiding is deliberately narrow, because it moves money back out of your books. Ask an owner, manager or accountant to do it.
The payment went in without being attached to the invoice it settles. Open it and record it against that invoice, or the account keeps appearing on Pending.
Check the Oldest Item column — usually one old item was never settled while later ones were. Part payments leave the remainder pending by design.
Commission and revenue are both worked out on money collected. Anything invoiced and not yet paid counts as nothing — see Referral commissions.
Currency is a lab-wide billing setting, not a per-payment one — see Set your currency.

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FAQ

Yes. Type a figure below the prefilled balance and the invoice becomes partly paid, with the remainder still showing on Pending. Employers settling a month’s collections in instalments are the usual case.
There is no delete. Voiding keeps the row, marks it Voided with your reason and restores the invoice balance — which is what an auditor and your own reconciliation both need.
Not from this screen. Send the invoice from Billing Dashboard and choose who receives it — the employer’s accounts address rather than the patient, where the employer is paying.
Bank Transfer, with the remittance number in Reference. That pairing is what lets you match a bank statement line back to this row months later.
Yes — every revenue figure across the lab’s reporting is collected money on orders created in the range, and it comes from this screen. See Lab analytics.