Ask any hospital accountant where reconciliation hurts most, and “advances” comes up fast. A patient pays ahead, the amount lives in someone’s memory or a register, and at settlement nobody is quite sure what’s left.
Advances belong in a wallet, not on a bill
In OlivHealth, an advance goes into the patient’s wallet as a credit, never as an overpayment on a bill. When a bill is due, you draw from the wallet; if money is owed back, you refund from it. Every movement is a ledger entry, so the running balance is always exact and always explainable.
Guardrails that protect the money
The rules are enforced by the system, not by discipline: a wallet can’t be over-drawn or over-withdrawn, a bill payment can’t exceed the balance due, and a refund can’t exceed what was actually paid. Amounts are integer paise throughout, so there’s no rounding drift between a deposit and a draw-down.
Why it matters at audit
When every credit and debit is a timestamped, reason-tagged entry, the wallet balance isn’t a guess, it’s a number you can defend. That’s the difference between a clean month-end and a long evening with a calculator.