Every rupee, accounted for. Cash to UPI to Razorpay.

How most Indian schools record payments today

At the fee counter of a CBSE day school in Lucknow, the morning collection looks like this: cash from 22 parents, six cheques drawn on different banks, four NEFT confirmations parents WhatsApp from their banking app, three Razorpay UPI payments that came in overnight, two demand drafts. The counter staff writes each one in a triplicate receipt book, copies the totals into an Excel sheet at lunch, and emails the bank reconciliation columns to the accounts officer in the evening.

By evening, three problems exist. The Razorpay payments are in the gateway dashboard; the bank statement won't show them till tomorrow's settlement. Two cheques have UTRs the staff forgot to write down. One parent's NEFT receipt mentions a wrong amount because their banking app showed ₹12,500 instead of ₹15,200. By Friday, the school has ₹18,000 of unreconciled payments — amounts where the office can't say with certainty whether the parent paid or not.

Payment recording isn't typing in an Excel sheet — it's a workflow with state. Each payment has a method, a reference number, a bank, a status (initiated, succeeded, failed, reversed), an invoice it's settling, a receipt it'll generate. Inkwelly's Fee Payments module makes every payment a first-class record — created, reconciled, reversed if needed, all audit-logged.

How Inkwelly Fee Payments work

The Payments screen at /student-fee/payments lists every payment your school has recorded, with filters for status (FeePaymentStatus enum: INITIATED, SUCCEEDED, FAILED, REVERSED, PENDING), paymentMode (FeePaymentMode enum: CASH, CHEQUE, DD, NEFT, RTGS, IMPS, UPI, CARD, ONLINE_GATEWAY, BANK_TRANSFER, OTHER), reconciled flag (isReconciled), reversal flag (isReversed), and date windows. Each payment carries a unique paymentNumber, the linked invoice(s), the method-specific reference (cheque number, UTR, gateway transaction ID), the bank/source, the amount, the receipt it generated, and full audit metadata.

The form to record a payment is mode-aware. Pick CASH — just amount and date. Pick CHEQUE — cheque number, drawn-on bank, branch, instrument date. Pick UPI — UPI ID, transaction reference. Pick ONLINE_GATEWAY — the system auto-fills from the Razorpay / PayU / Cashfree webhook. The payment is linked to one or more invoices (split-tender supported), discounts and waivers are honoured, the receipt auto-generates, and the linked invoice's outstanding amount updates instantly.

Reconciliation runs as a separate, explicit step. The ReconcilePaymentDialog lets the accounts officer mark a payment as reconciled with the bank statement, with optional UTR/reference matching. Until reconciled, the payment shows as 'Pending Bank Match' on the principal's dashboard. Bounced cheques and failed gateway settlements use the ReversePaymentDialog — the payment flips to REVERSED with reason, the linked invoice's outstanding amount snaps back, and the audit log captures the entire chain.

Walkthrough — three views, end to end

“Pehle har Friday ko bank statement aur fee Excel mil-ke compare karna padta tha — ek-ek line. 60-70 payments mein 3-4 mismatches — do din lagte the find karne mein. Ab Inkwelly ki Reconcile Payment dialog daily 5 minute ka kaam hai. Mismatches usi din pakad lete hain. Razorpay ke webhook se UPI payments auto-record ho jate hain — manual entry ka jhanjhat khatam.”

Five operations the school office runs daily

1. Counter close. End of day, the counter staff exports the day's CASH payments grouped by hour, with totals, for the cash drop to the bank. 30 seconds.

2. Bank reconciliation. Accounts officer opens isReconciled=false, matches against the morning's bank statement, marks reconciled. 60-90 seconds per payment with the dialog open.

3. Razorpay daily settlement. Filter paymentMode=ONLINE_GATEWAY, paymentDateFrom=today-2, see settlement vs charged amounts — reconciles automatically when the Razorpay webhook posts the settlement event.

4. Bounced cheque handling. Cheque bounces overnight — the Cheque module flags it. The Payments screen surfaces it under isReversed=false plus linked-cheque-status=BOUNCED. Two clicks to reverse, the parent's invoice outstanding restores, late-fee accrues.

5. Quarterly audit prep. Filter paymentDateFrom=quarter start, group by mode, export to PDF — the principal's CA gets a clean per-mode collection report. 5 minutes vs the 4-day archaeology of an Excel-only school.

See your payments register live in 30 minutes

Bring your last week's bank statement and a sample collection sheet. We'll show you the Payments screen with cash, cheque, UPI, Razorpay flowing in — reconciled, reversed and refunded — with the full audit trail at every step.

Limits, safety and the small print

Payments are immutable once SUCCEEDED. Editing the amount, mode, reference or invoice link of a SUCCEEDED payment is not allowed. The right action is to REVERSE with reason and create a fresh corrected payment. Audit log retains both records.

Reversal requires reason + admin role. Free-text minimum 10 characters; admin role from IAM. The linked invoice's outstanding amount restores in the same DB transaction, the Receipt is marked invalid, and the linked Cheque (if any) flips to BOUNCED.

Reconciliation is non-destructive. Marking a payment reconciled doesn't change its amount or status — it just sets isReconciled=true with timestamp and user. Un-reconciling is allowed (with audit trail) for the rare case where the bank reverses a settlement.

Gateway integrations are webhook-driven. Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree post webhooks for payment.captured, payment.failed, refund.processed events. Inkwelly verifies the webhook signature server-side and updates the payment record. Manual entry is also supported for offline gateway scenarios.

Multi-tenant isolation. Each school's payments live in an isolated tenant boundary. School A's UPI payment is invisible to School B even within the same trust.

DPDP Act 2023 alignment. Payment records contain student PII (name, admission number) and parent payment instrument data (last-4 cheque number, UPI ID, masked bank account). Encrypted at rest with AES-256 on Mumbai-region servers; accessible only via IAM-controlled roles. Audit log records every payment, reconciliation, reversal and refund — with user, timestamp and IP. CBSE / Income Tax / GST inspection answers from a single export.