A receipt the parent trusts. A register the auditor signs off.

How most Indian schools issue fee receipts today

A parent walks up to the fee counter at a CBSE day school in Patna with cash. The counter staff opens the triplicate receipt book, writes the date, the student's admission number, the amount in words and figures, the head ('Tuition Fee Q2'), tears off the parent's copy, files the school's copy in a folder, and reads aloud the receipt number for the school's manual ledger. Multiply that by 80 receipts a day during admission week, and by Friday no one knows whether receipts 0457 and 0458 were issued or skipped — the staff filled them in the wrong order.

When a parent loses their receipt and asks for a duplicate, the staff opens the binder, finds the carbon copy, photocopies it, and stamps 'Duplicate'. 8-12 minutes per request. When a parent wants the receipt on WhatsApp, the staff has no way to send it digitally. When the principal asks for last quarter's collection split by fee head, the office types it into Excel from the binder.

Receipts are the legal artefact of every fee transaction. They prove what the school billed, what the parent paid, and what the school's books should reflect. Inkwelly's Fee Receipts module makes every receipt a structured, fiscal-year-numbered, PDF-renderable, audit-stamped record — generated automatically from each successful Payment, sendable on WhatsApp/email in one click, immutable once issued.

How Inkwelly Fee Receipts work

The Receipts screen at /student-fee/receipts lists every receipt your school has issued in the current academic session, with filters for status (ReceiptStatus enum: ACTIVE / CANCELLED), receiptDate window, and fiscalYear. Each receipt carries a unique receiptNumber formatted per your school's policy — typically RCT/2026-27/0457 (prefix-fiscalyear-sequence) configured in Fee Settings. Sort by receipt date, receipt number, amount or status. Summary cards count active, cancelled and total-collected for the visible filter.

Receipts auto-generate from every successful Payment recorded — the school office never types a receipt manually. The PDF carries the school's letterhead (uploaded once in school admin settings), the receipt number, date, parent name, student name + admission number + class, the line items (Tuition Q2 ₹4,500, Computer Lab ₹300, Late Fee ₹100), the discount stack snapshot, the payment mode + reference, the amount in words, and the school's seal.

From the receipt detail page, the office can click Send Receipt to push the PDF to the parent on WhatsApp (via the school's WhatsApp Business API integration), email, or both. The system records the send timestamp, channel and delivery status. Reprint generates a fresh PDF with the same receipt number (no duplicate sequence) — useful when parents lose the original. Cancel Receipt opens a dialog requiring a reason; on submit, the receipt flips to CANCELLED, the linked Payment and Invoice reflect the cancellation, and any cascading workflows (Refunds if money has been collected) trigger automatically.

Walkthrough — four screens, end to end

“Pehle har duplicate receipt ke liye 10 minute lagte the — binder kholo, carbon copy dhundo, photocopy karo, stamp lagao. Ab Inkwelly mein parent agar phone karta hai bolta hai 'receipt kho gayi', hum 30 second mein WhatsApp pe re-send karte hain. Same receipt number, Duplicate Copy stamp. Audit week mein CA poori receipt register ek PDF mein le ke chala gaya — fiscal year numbering audit-defensible.”

Real-world operations on the Receipts screen

Daily counter close. End of day, accountant filters by receiptDate=today, exports the day's receipts as a single PDF for the principal. 30 seconds.

Lost-receipt request. Parent calls; staff searches by student admission number, opens the receipt, clicks Send on WhatsApp. 30 seconds vs the manual school's 8-12 minutes.

Quarter-end CA review. Filter by quarter date range, export all receipts as a zipped PDF set; the CA gets the complete register with payment-mode and discount-stack columns. 5 minutes.

Bulk WhatsApp send for late filers. Filter receipts not yet sent (sent=false), select all, click Bulk Send. The school office pushes 80 receipts to parents in one click.

Cancel an erroneous receipt. Reason captured, admin confirms, linked payment + invoice + refund cascade automatically. The receipt number stays in the register as CANCELLED — audit-defensible.

See receipt issue + send + cancel live in 30 minutes

Bring a sample of your current school receipt and one parent contact. We'll generate the receipt inside Inkwelly in real time — PDF with letterhead, send on WhatsApp, demonstrate reprint and cancellation. By the call's end, you have a working receipt template ready for production.

Limits, safety and the small print

Receipts are immutable once issued. The line items, amount, parent details, payment reference and receipt number cannot be edited. Errors are corrected via cancellation + re-issue, with both records preserved in the audit trail.

Cancellation requires reason + admin role. Free-text minimum 10 characters; admin role from IAM. Cancelled receipts retain their numbers in the register — no gaps, no silent removals.

Reprint preserves the receipt number. Lost-receipt re-issuance does not consume a new sequence number. The PDF is stamped 'Duplicate Copy' and the reprint count + user + timestamp is audit-logged.

WhatsApp delivery requires Business API. The school's WhatsApp Business API account (configured once in school admin settings) is required for WhatsApp send. Email send works without configuration. Both fall back gracefully if the parent's contact details are incomplete.

PDF is content-hashed for tamper detection. Every generated PDF carries an embedded content hash; if the file is modified, verification fails. Useful when parents present 'altered' copies during disputes.

Multi-tenant isolation. Each school's receipts are isolated. School A's fiscal-year sequence is separate from School B's. Trust-level dashboards roll up by school.

DPDP Act 2023 alignment. Receipts contain student PII (name, admission number, parent name, payment instrument data). Encrypted at rest with AES-256 on Mumbai-region servers, accessible only via IAM-controlled roles. Audit log records every issue, send, reprint and cancellation — with user, timestamp and IP. Income Tax / GST / CBSE inspections answer from a single audit export.