Giving patients a proper receipt at reception

What a practice's receipt should show when a patient pays at the front desk, how the patient gets it, and which receipt settings are only a preview today.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 5 min read · For Healthcare businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

A patient finishes a consultation, stops at the front desk and pays. Then comes the question every receptionist hears a dozen times a morning: can I have a receipt? Some patients need it for a medical aid or insurance claim, some for an employer, some simply for their own files.

Too many practices still answer with a slip torn from a duplicate book, or with the card machine's slip, which shows an amount and the last digits of a card but nothing about what was paid for. Neither helps when the patient's scheme queries the claim three weeks later, and neither ties back to the practice's books.

This article sets out what a receipt from reception should carry, how Achekam's till produces one, and the receipt settings you should not rely on yet.

What belongs on a receipt from reception

Whatever system you use, anyone reading the receipt later should be able to answer five questions without phoning the practice. Use this as a checklist when you look at your current receipt:

• Who was paid: the practice's registered name and, if it is registered for VAT, its tax number.
• When: the date the money changed hands.
• Which receipt: a unique number that never repeats, so a query can be traced to one sale.
• For what: each item, such as the consultation, a procedure or a dressing.
• How: the amount paid by each method, if the patient split it between cash and card.

Where any line carries VAT, the receipt should show the tax by rate, so the patient, the scheme or the employer can see what was included. South African practices should also read section 26 of the Consumer Protection Act, which sets out the written record a supplier must give a consumer for every transaction and what it must contain.

How the Achekam till builds the receipt

The till sits under Commerce & POS and comes with the Point of Sale add-on. A practice without that add-on does not see the till, and the server refuses its till requests.

When reception completes a sale, the server posts it to the practice's books and then makes the receipt from that posted sale, as a PDF. The receipt shows every payment taken on the sale, VAT broken down by rate and the practice's tax number. Because it is built from the posted record rather than from whatever was on screen, the receipt and the ledger tell the same story.

Receipt numbers are handed out by the server, so a practice running two tills at a busy front desk will not find the same number on two different patients' receipts.

Reception then chooses how the patient gets it:

1. Print it for a patient who wants paper. The till does not drive a dedicated receipt printer, so the PDF is printed like any other document from the reception computer.
2. Download it to keep with the patient's paperwork or forward later.
3. E-mail it to the patient, which suits anyone who will forward it to a scheme or an employer.

The whole bill first, then the receipt

The server refuses any till sale that is not paid in full. A till receipt therefore always means the sale it describes was settled. For cash, the till records the money handed over and the change given, so the receipt and the end-of-day count agree.

Here is how a split payment works in practice. A patient owes for a consultation and a dressing and pays part in cash and the rest by card. The receptionist records both payments on the same sale. The card amount is captured from the bank terminal's slip, because the till is not connected to the card machine. Once the two payments cover the total, the sale goes through, and the receipt lists the cash and the card separately.

What the till will not do is take part of the bill and leave a balance open. For a patient who pays over time, issue an invoice and follow the balance up with statements, as described in statements and reminders for patient accounts.

Paying by QR code on the practice's own gateway

A patient who would rather pay from a phone can scan a QR code shown at the till. It opens a pay page on a payment gateway the practice has set up with its own account, and the payment counts only once the server has confirmed it with that gateway. Until then the sale stays open.

The gateways on offer depend on the till's currency and on what the practice has switched on:

Kenyan practices also have M-Pesa prompts and till-number payments, covered in taking M-Pesa at a Kenyan practice's reception. Studios and gyms use the same QR route, described in members paying by QR code at the front desk.

VAT lines to check with your accountant

The VAT shown on the receipt is only as right as the way each item was set up, so it is worth an hour with your accountant before you rely on it.

• South Africa: each till line is taxed at its product's own VAT rate, so a zero-rated product stays zero-rated, and other products take the standard rate.
• Nigeria: at the time of writing, Nigerian law zero-rates medical services and medical and pharmaceutical products, among other items. Confirm how your services are treated with the NRS or your adviser.
• All three countries: today a product marked Exempt in the Item Master is recorded at the till, and on the VAT return, as zero-rated. Exempt and zero-rated are not the same thing for VAT, so if any item you sell is exempt, raise it with your accountant before trusting those receipt lines.

Receipt settings that are only a preview

The receipt screen offers a paper size, a logo and footer text. Today those options change only an on-screen mock-up, not the receipt itself. The PDF a patient receives follows the server's own layout whatever the mock-up shows.

So do not promise patients that a footer message, such as a cancellation policy or your banking details, will appear on their till receipt. Put that information where it does reach them: on your invoices, your practice terms or a notice at the desk.

Before the next busy morning

Take one test sale through the till, e-mail the receipt to yourself and read it the way a medical scheme's claims clerk would: practice name, tax number, receipt number, items, payments and VAT. If anything a patient needs is missing, sort it out now, while the waiting room is empty, rather than at the counter.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.