GSTN portal begins invoice uploading for businesses

New Delhi: The GSTN portal has started accepting uploading of sale and purchase invoices of businesses generated post Goods and Services Tax rollout on July 1. GST Network (GSTN) is the company handling the IT backbone for the new tax regime.

The uploaded invoice data can be saved at the portal and the GST system operated by GSTN will auto populate the invoice data of the respective buyers, the company said in a statement.

The GST kicked in from July 1 and so far, the Goods and Services network has been facilitating registration of businesses.

"If the taxpayer has limited number of invoices, he can directly enter the details at the GST portal. However, this would not be practicable if the number of invoices is in hundreds or thousands," it said.

It added that to help such taxpayers, GSTN has developed a tool which can be downloaded from the portal and installed on the taxpayer's computer to prepare the return in GSTR-1 format at one's ease in an offline mode without connecting to Internet.

"The GSTR-1 software and the offline java tool have been elaborately tested. The portal has started accepting invoice uploads into GSTR-1 from July 24. Now taxpayers can prepare GSTR-1 at their convenience on their own computer and upload the data to the Portal easily within a matter of minutes using the offline tool," Navin Kumar, Chairman, GSTN said.

He said businesses, particularly MSMEs and larger businesses that generate large number of invoices should to start uploading invoice data to portal straightaway and not wait until September when the July return will be due. The company has stated that the invoice upload facility is available 24x7.

"It has advised that the taxpayers, such as large manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers, should frequently upload their supply invoice details at regular interval to prevent any hiccups near the due date," it added.

Generating invoices for dealings above Rs 200 and keeping invoice records in serial number even if maintained manually, are pre-requisites for claiming input tax credit under the GST regime.

Under GST, which is a single tax in place of multiple central and state levies like excise, service tax and VAT, businesses are required to upload on GSTN portal invoices of their trade every month.