What goes on a receipt
Its own series, separate from your invoices.
The date the money arrived, not the date you wrote it up.
The payer's name as it appears on the payment.
In figures and in words.
Bank transfer, UPI, cheque, cash — and the reference number.
The invoice number the payment settles.
What remains outstanding, if anything.
Yours or an authorised signatory's.
The two fields that get left off are the payment reference and the balance. The reference is what lets either side trace the payment when a bank statement is queried months later. The balance is what stops a part payment being remembered as settlement in full.
Part payments and advances
Where a payment does not clear the invoice, the receipt has to be explicit about what is left. The generator handles this through the amount paid field: enter what has been received and the document prints the total, the amount paid and the balance due underneath it, so there is no ambiguity about what the payment covered.
For an advance taken before any supply, a receipt is the acknowledgement — but be aware that receiving an advance against a future supply can have GST consequences of its own depending on what is being supplied. That is a question for your accountant rather than a formatting question.
Rent receipts
A rent receipt is the same document with three additions, and it is worth getting right because it is used to claim HRA:
- The period the rent covers, stated as a date range.
- The address of the property.
- The landlord's PAN, where the annual rent is large enough for the tenant's employer to require it.
Use the Receipt document type, put the property address and period in the detail line of the item, and the landlord's PAN in the notes. It prints as a clean, complete rent receipt.