Where payments live
The Payments page (/payments) is the clinic-wide record of every payment that's ever been taken, regardless of which invoice, patient, or location it belongs to. Where the Invoices page tells you what's owed, the Payments page tells you what's actually come in — the two are related but answer different questions, and reconciling a day's takings usually means looking at both.
Payments are always recorded against an invoice, never as a standalone transaction. That's a deliberate constraint: it keeps every dollar collected traceable back to what it was actually for, which matters the moment a patient disputes a charge or you need to explain a discrepancy at month end.
- Recording a payment against an invoice with the Payment Drawer or Payment Sheet
- How payment methods work and where they're configured
- Reviewing a single payment's full detail
- Searching and filtering the Payments list
- Where else in ClinyPal a patient's payment history shows up
Recording a payment
You'll usually start recording a payment from the invoice itself, right after finishing a visit at the front desk — this opens the Payment Drawer (or Payment Sheet, depending on where in ClinyPal you launch it from) with that invoice already selected, so there's no risk of applying the payment to the wrong invoice. You can also start from the Payments page directly when you already know which invoice you're settling.
Open the payment form
From an invoice, click <strong>Record Payment</strong> to open the Payment Drawer with that invoice pre-selected. Alternatively, start a new payment from the Payments page and choose the invoice manually.
Confirm the invoice and balance
Check that the correct invoice, patient, and outstanding balance are shown before entering an amount — this is the easiest moment to catch a mix-up between two patients with similar names.
Enter the amount
Enter the amount being paid. This can be the full outstanding balance, or a partial payment if the patient is paying in installments or on the day of a payment plan.
Choose the payment method
Select how the patient paid, from the list configured in Payment Types settings — typically Cash, Card, or Bank Transfer, though your clinic may have added others.
Save the payment
Click <strong>Save</strong>. The invoice's outstanding balance updates immediately, and the payment appears in the Payments list and on the patient's own record.
Where payment methods come from
The method dropdown in the Payment Drawer isn't hardcoded — it reflects whatever your clinic has configured in Payment Types (Settings). If a method a patient wants to use isn't listed, that's a settings gap to fix, not a product limitation: add it there and it becomes selectable immediately.
Reviewing a payment's full detail
Clicking any row in the Payments list opens the Payment Detail Modal, which is the authoritative record of that single transaction: the amount, the method, the date, the invoice it was applied to, and which staff member recorded it. That last detail matters more than it might seem — if a discrepancy ever needs investigating, knowing who entered the payment is usually the fastest way to resolve it.
Searching and filtering the payment list
- <strong>Search</strong> by patient name or payment reference to jump straight to a specific transaction.
- <strong>Date range filter</strong> narrows the list to a specific day or period — useful for daily cash-up or a monthly reconciliation.
- <strong>Location filter</strong> isolates payments taken at a single site if your clinic runs more than one.
- <strong>Method filter</strong> shows only payments of a given type, for example to verify all card payments for a day against a terminal's own report.
Payment history on a patient's own record
You don't always need to go through the clinic-wide Payments page to check what a single patient has paid. Their own record surfaces the same information scoped to just them, which is usually faster when you're already on their chart.