The Refund You Forgot to Claim
The template was built from a real problem: tickets booked, journeys cancelled or changed, and the cancellation window missed because there was no centralized record of which PNRs were still active and when the refund deadline was approaching. Indian Railways' refund structure rewards early cancellation heavily and penalizes late or no-show cancellation proportionally — missing the window on a confirmed ticket can mean forfeiting the full fare.
A database of all active PNRs, sorted by departure date, with a calculated Days Left field that automatically shows "in the past" for expired bookings, is the instrument that prevents this. It takes three seconds to open the list and see which tickets are in the next 7 days versus which have already departed versus which are upcoming bookings not yet close to their cancellation decision window.
The Days Left field — calculated as the difference between the departure datetime and the current moment, expressed in whole days — is the operational core. It doesn't require you to remember when you booked something or open a separate calendar. It shows the countdown, and it changes every time you look at the record.
What a Complete PNR Record Contains
PNR number, Train Number, and Train Name are the identity fields — the minimum information needed to look up a booking in the IRCTC portal or at a station counter. Having all three per record means you can look up the booking by either the PNR for the portal query or the train number and name for station enquiry, without searching through email confirmation threads.
Berth preference is the field that matters for journey comfort, particularly on overnight trains where the difference between a lower berth (your preference) and an upper side berth (what waitlist availability gave you) is a full night of discomfort. Keeping the preference on record alongside the confirmed allocation in the Notes area lets you see at a glance whether the booking came through with the class and berth position you wanted, and whether it's worth monitoring for availability changes before the journey.
Departure and Arrival as datetime fields — not just dates — give you the precise departure time that matters when you're planning your route to the station. The Track Status URL field links directly to the Indian Railways train running status page for the specific service, which is where you check whether the Rajdhani is running 3 hours late due to a fog disruption before you've left for the station.
The Cancellation Record as Financial Tracking
Amt and Refund as INR currency fields track the financial loop of each booking. When a ticket is cancelled, the Refund field captures what was recovered. The delta between Amt and Refund, visible in the record, shows exactly what the cancellation cost — which is the number that informs decisions about future booking timing, insurance coverage, and how early to book for routes where you're uncertain about travel plans.
Journey Completed as a boolean moves the record from active to historical. Filter Journey Completed = No for your active PNR list. Filter Journey Completed = Yes to see your travel history, which is useful for expense reimbursement, for understanding your travel patterns on a route, and for having a record of what you paid for equivalent journeys when planning a future trip.
Mode of Payment is the field that traces which bookings went through which payment instrument — relevant when reconciling credit card statements or when a refund credit needs to be matched against the original payment method. A refund on a journey paid via net banking goes back to the bank account. A refund on an IRCTC wallet-funded booking goes back to the wallet. Knowing which mode was used for which PNR saves the confusion that happens when a refund doesn't appear where expected.