The Cyber Treasury portal runs several different challan forms, and each one hides its own trap. These are the notes we wish existed before we read the portal's source.
The one most people need. Any of the 56 departments, paid by Head of Account. Use it for permit fees, licence fees, fines, court fees and anything without a form of its own.
Society registration, annual returns and firm recordings, paid to the Registrar of Firms and Societies. The simplest of the forms — one account head — with two things that will stop you dead.
Liquor and licence fees, on the Excise department's own list of account heads. It looks like the Common Challan but behaves differently in three places, and all three are silent about it.
Central Sales Tax on the unregistered path. An 11-digit TIN, a fixed Head of Account list, and no login.
Personal, Education and Special Personal Deposit accounts, paid by Operator Code rather than by department.
Start from what you are paying, not from the department. If a treasury clerk handed you a Head of Account code, that is Common Challan. If you are paying sales tax against a TIN, that is Commercial Tax. If it is a liquor or licence fee, that is Excise, which has its own account heads. If you are paying the Registrar of Firms and Societies — a society registration, an annual return, a firm recording — that is Firms And Societies. If your money sits in a deposit account run by an operator, that is Deposit Fund Transfer.
They sit under two different menus on mptreasury.gov.in, both in the For Unregistered User column, which trips people up: Common Challan, Excise, Firms And Societies and Deposit Fund Transfer are under Cyber Treasury → Pay Challans, while Commercial Tax is under Cyber Treasury → Pay Taxes. None of them needs a portal login.
One habit worth carrying across every one of them: the challan is not recorded when the fields are full. Four of the five forms make you click a separate button to move the line into a grid first, and it is the single most common reason a payment goes in for the wrong amount, or does not go in at all.
