Tax and finance systems

Vault works out the GST on every charge and keeps a site's books, or leaves them to the hospital's own finance system, according to the billing mode the site runs in. This page lists what passes between Vault and outside tax and finance systems, sets out the billing modes, and follows invoices and charges to a finance system that keeps the books.

What flows

Business invoices go from Vault to the Invoice Registration Portal for e-invoice registration. Invoices and charges go to the hospital's finance system on the finance lane, Vault's feed to that system. The tax itself is worked out inside Vault, one charge at a time.

GST on each charge

Each charge carries its GST from the moment Vault prices it, as CGST with SGST or as IGST, by the place of supply. Finalising an invoice fixes its GST breakdown by tax code and rate. That fixed breakdown is the tax figure the e-invoice and the finance lane both carry.

Codes, rates, exemptions and the taxable base are set out in tax and statutory charges.

E-invoices

Each site holds an effective-dated setting that records whether its turnover brings it under e-invoicing, and Vault reads that setting as of each invoice's date. At such a site, a business-to-business tax invoice, one raised to a buyer with a GST registration, is registered with the Invoice Registration Portal as it is finalised.

The portal returns the Invoice Reference Number (IRN), an acknowledgement number and a signed QR code. Vault writes all three onto the invoice under audit and prints them on the bill, while the invoice's number, lines and tax stay as they were finalised.

Any later change to those lines or that tax goes through a credit note, and the invoice keeps its number. The charges beneath it follow the same rule, set out in a charge stays fixed. Until the portal connection is set up for a site, each invoice that needs an IRN is marked as awaiting registration with the reason shown, and the bill goes ahead.

The billing modes

The billing mode decides which system bills a site's patients and which system keeps its books. Each site runs in one of three.

Vault keeps a balanced double-entry ledger in the first mode. Each posting commits together with the money event behind it, under the controls in the controls matrix. In the third mode, a member of staff records that the external system's bill for the stay is reconciled, and that record clears the discharge finance gate.

Switching a site's mode

The billing mode is held on the site's record in Nexus Manager. A switch is made from Vault's settings, and the new mode reaches that record only after Vault's checks.

1. 1

   Propose the new mode

   An administrator proposes the switch for the site. Leaving the first mode also takes a typed confirmation and a second person's approval, after a preview of what the switch affects.

2. 2

   Vault checks for pending payments

   Vault refuses the switch while any payment at the site is pending. A pending payment is an online collection still waiting on the gateway's confirmation, as payments describes.

3. 3

   The switch is recorded

   The new mode and its audit entry are written in one transaction, and the switch opens a new epoch, a marker that each switch advances. Every money record raised from then on carries the new mode and epoch.

Open invoices and deposits leave a switch free to proceed, because each money record keeps the mode and epoch it was raised under. A payment, refund or credit note that settles an earlier invoice posts the way that invoice was raised.

The finance lane

In the second mode, the hospital's finance system keeps the books from what Vault bills. A billing connector is the connection in Westron that reaches that system, holding its endpoint, its mapping and a reference to the hospital's credential for it.

Vault sends one FHIR R4 resource for each item in the charge master, each charge raised against an encounter and each finalised invoice.

Each send takes the governed outbound path set out in outbound exchanges, keyed so the finance system can recognise a retry, and leaves a boundary record of the crossing. Vault lists each billing connector with its sync status on a read-only page and holds no credential of its own for the finance system.

General-ledger exports to an accounting package, GST return filing, TDS reconciliation and e-way bills sit outside the finance lane and e-invoice registration.

Configuration

The table shows who sets each item, and each Westron connection holds the hospital's credential as authentication between systems sets out.

Common confusions

Read how the billing modes shape a deployment in integration models, and how an online collection reaches its invoice in payments.