Payment Vouchers: Committee Approval Before Money Leaves — In the App or Signed on Paper

At the end of every month, many societies do the same thing. The accountant writes a payment voucher: salaries, the lift company, the generator mechanic, the plant contractor, each with a cheque number. The voucher goes around the committee for signatures. Only then are the cheques handed over. And then someone types every one of those payments into the books, one by one.

Nizam now does that whole process. You prepare the voucher in the app, the committee approves it, and releasing it records every payment for you.

Prepare a Voucher in a Minute

• Pick the account it's paid from: any bank or cash account, with cheque, transfer or online payment.
• Tap "Add unpaid" and tick what to pay from everything still owed: salaries from payroll, grouped by month, and unpaid vendor invoices and bills. Pay the whole month's salaries or only chosen staff, and pay a bill in full or in part.
• Type any other payment, like a repair or the plant contractor, with its category, who it's paid to and a narration. It becomes an expense in the books only when the voucher is paid.
• Number every cheque at once: enter the first cheque number and each line gets the next one in order.

Anything already sitting on another voucher is shown as such, so nothing gets paid twice.

Approve in the App, or Sign on Paper

Every voucher asks how it will be approved:

• Approve in the app. Committee members get a notification, and the voucher waits for them on their home screen. They see every line and tap Approve or Reject, giving a reason when they reject. Everyone sees who has approved and who hasn't yet.
• Sign on paper. Print the voucher, which has a signature box for each approver, and get it signed the way your committee always has. Then tap Mark as signed. You can attach a photo or PDF of the signed copy, which is optional, so it's on record for the auditors.

Who approves follows your complex's Approval Policy, the same one used for quotations and invoices. Up to your amount threshold, any one committee member can approve. Above it, the members you chose decide, with the minimum approvals and rejections you set, all the way up to "everyone must approve". The person who sends a voucher can never approve it themselves, and a waiting voucher keeps the rule it was sent with, even if the policy changes.

The voucher is the permission. Nothing is paid, and nothing touches the books, until it's approved.

One Tap Pays Everything

Once a voucher is approved, Pay now records every line from the chosen account on the date you pick:

• Salaries are marked paid in payroll, exactly as if you'd paid them from the Payroll screen, including loan and salary-advance deductions.
• Vendor invoices and bills are paid, each payment carrying its cheque number.
• Typed payments are recorded as expenses in their categories.
• Everything goes in together or not at all. If the bank account doesn't have enough, nothing is half-paid.

The printed voucher shows the voucher number, the account, every line with its cheque number and narration, the total, and signature boxes. On app-approved vouchers it shows each approver with the time they approved.

Make It the Only Way Money Leaves

Some committees want every payment approved. Turn on All payments need a voucher and set a petty-cash limit. Expenses, vendor bills, salaries and bonuses above the limit can then only be paid through an approved voucher, while small payments like tea or a plumber's visit can still be paid directly. Voucher numbers can also continue from your paper series: if your last paper voucher was 14, the first one in Nizam can be 15.

Every Document Now Has a Number

With this release, every bill, receipt, expense and journal entry in Nizam has its own number, counted separately for each complex:

• BIL-0042 for bills, RCP-0042 for receipts, EXP-0042 for expenses and INC-0042 for other income.
• JV-0042 for journal entries, TC-0007 for transfer & clearance certificates and PV-0015 for payment vouchers.

The numbers run 1, 2, 3 with no gaps, and existing records were numbered in the order they were created. They appear on bill cards, receipts (on screen, printed and on WhatsApp), the Finance ledger, reports and exports. When a resident quotes "RCP-0042" or an auditor asks for "EXP-0108", you can find it straight away. The add-expense form even shows the number the new record will get.

The Details That Matter

• Edit anything before it's paid. Editing a voucher sends it back to draft, and it needs approving again.
• Rejected vouchers come back with the reason, so they can be corrected and resent.
• A full history on every voucher: who prepared it, who approved or rejected it and when, and who paid it.
• Separate permissions for viewing, preparing, paying and setting the rules. Approving isn't a permission at all; it belongs to the committee members on the voucher.
• Available in every language Nizam supports.

Payment vouchers and document numbers are live now for every complex on Nizam. Read more about housing society management and all features, or start a free month today.