Money: invoices, payments, GST and statements

Every sale raises an invoice: a booking, a membership, a counter sale, a tournament entry. Numbering is gapless per branch per financial year, which GST requires, and the number is allocated only when the invoice is actually created, so a failed attempt never leaves a hole.

If the club has a GSTIN in Settings, each invoice carries GST lines — CGST and SGST for a customer in your own state, a single IGST line for one outside it — worked out per line, because a 12% drink and an 18% protein bar on one receipt are two rates. If the club has no GSTIN, there are no GST lines and no GST questions anywhere.

The customer’s name, GSTIN and address are copied onto the invoice at the moment it is issued. A customer who moves house next year does not rewrite last year’s tax invoices.

A payment is recorded against an invoice with its method — cash, UPI, card machine, bank transfer, or the online gateway when the customer pays from the portal. Each payment gets its own receipt number. One invoice can be settled by several methods: ₹1,000 cash and ₹652 by UPI is one sale, two tenders, two receipts, and the cash drawer expects only the cash.

1. 1Raise a credit note against the invoice, with a reason. It scales every line and every tax line by the same fraction, so the GST split stays exactly proportionate to what was charged.
2. 2If money has to go back, record a refund against the credit note. A refund is capped by what was actually paid, not by the note’s face value — crediting an unpaid invoice cancels a debt, it does not entitle anyone to cash.

Credit notes and refunds have their own gapless series, and both are declared on the GST return, which is exactly why money never leaves against an invoice directly.

A customer can hold credit with the club — an advance, a goodwill amount, a refund they chose to keep on account. The wallet is a payment method: spending it clears an invoice without cash moving. It cannot be overdrawn, and its balance is always the sum of its entries.

The electricity bill, the shuttles, the plumber. Expenses is a short form: category, amount, how it was paid, a note. The note is required, because cash leaving with no explanation is indefensible later, and a future date is refused, because a bill paid next Tuesday has not been paid. Each expense posts straight into the books; there is no second list to reconcile.

Statements shows the profit and loss, the balance sheet and the cash flow for any period, built from the same books every invoice and expense posted into. The Trial balance screen is the accountant’s view of the same thing. The GSTR-1 export is reached from Statements: one file, the month’s outward supplies as the return wants them.

Behind the screens is a full double-entry ledger — forty-four accounts, every entry balanced, corrections by reversal, never by edit. You do not need to know that to run the club. Your accountant will be glad of it.

Next: The counter and stock →