6 Tasks to Complete Before Starting Your E-Invoicing Journey

Simran Gupta |Updated on: May 28, 2024

According to GST Notification No. 10/2023, businesses with an aggregate turnover exceeding ₹5 crore in any financial year must complete their e-invoicing formalities starting from 1st August 2023. Utilizing effective business management software like TallyPrime can help businesses navigate this transition smoothly.

However, there are several important factors businesses need to consider before implementing e-invoicing, such as the specifics of e-invoices, deadlines, and any announced extensions. In this blog, we aim to shed light on these aspects and clarify any ambiguities surrounding this topic.

Here, we will explain to you the six important tasks you should complete, before you set up your software and other infrastructure to prepare and submit electronic invoices.

Which businesses are eligible for filing electronic invoices?

Here is the most important point you should be aware of as a business owner – you are eligible for filing and submitting e-invoices only if your Annual Aggregate Turnover (AATO) is above Rs.5 crore in any one of the financial years starting from 2017-18. Here are some important points you should know about the AATO:

The annual aggregate turnover eligibility was fixed at Rs. 10 crore; however, this has been set to Rs. 5 crore as of 1^st August 2023.
Only the actual supplies of your business will be considered when calculating this turnover. Your tax payments will be excluded while calculating the AATO of your business.

Have you checked the Enablement Status of your E-Invoices?

You have checked and understood that your business’s turnover falls under the eligibility criteria of the GST mandate. What’s next? To ensure you have a smooth e-invoicing filing process, you should check the enablement status of your electronic invoices first. Some points you need to note here are:

To do this, you should visit the Invoice Registration Portal, and check if your GSTIN (Goods & Service Tax Identification Number) is enabled or not. You can refer here to do so.
If your invoice feature is not enabled, you must activate it before starting your e-invoicing filing. We will provide detailed instructions on this in the third step.
Here’s an important point you should know – you are not required to do e-invoicing just because your GSTIN clears the enablement status. If for some reason your business is exempt from e-invoicing, and if you have notified the necessary authorities about the same, you can ignore this situation even if your GSTIN is enabled.

What to do when GSTIN is not enabled?

If you fall under the e-invoicing mandate with respect to your AATO and your GSTIN is not yet enabled, you have to first enable it before you can start any e-invoicing formality, You can visit here for the same.

Enabling electronic invoices under GST makes the process streamlined and accurate. Businesses can keep track of their invoices and avoid any kind of discrepancies or errors in this process.

You can visit the link provided in the second step to check the enablement status of your GST Identification Number. If it is not enabled, use the link mentioned in this step to manually enable it.

What to do when your GSTIN is enabled, but your AATO doesn’t qualify for e-invoicing?

In this step, we address the opposite scenario from what we discussed earlier. Suppose your Annual Aggregate Turnover has not exceeded ₹5 crores in any financial year since 2017-18, but your GSTIN is still enabled when you checked its status as mentioned in the second step. Here’s what you should do:

Raise a Ticket: Inform the concerned authorities about this issue and request that your GSTIN be disabled for electronic invoicing.

Report the Issue: Visit the provided link to report the issue and have the status disabled as quickly as possible.

Can you leave your GSTIN enabled on the site even if you don’t fall under the e-invoicing turnover mandate? The short answer is yes. While keeping your GST enabled may not have any major impact on your business, it may create questions in the minds of your customers.

Nowadays, customers can check about any business on the NIC (National Informatics Centre) portal. When they see that your AATO doesn’t fall under the e-invoicing mandate, but your GSTIN has been enabled, they may ask for a declaration form from you.

Hence, to avoid this ambiguity and extra procedures, it is better to raise a ticket and get your GSTIN disabled as soon as you notice that it shows as enabled on the portal.

Registering on the live invoice portal

Your AATO falls under the e-invoicing mandate, and your GSTIN has been rightly enabled on the portal. What’s next? Before you move on to the next step of setting up your internal e-invoicing processing software using TallyPrime, you should first register yourself on the live invoice registration portal (IRP) of the Government.

Visit this link here to register yourself and your GSTIN on this live portal. This is an important step because you can start generating electronic invoices only when you register on this IRP.

This way, you can handle multiple GSTINs and generate many electronic invoices to save time and manual effort.

GSP Registration

Once you've enabled your GSTIN and registered on the invoice portal, the final step is to register your third-party application provider for electronic invoicing.

Your third-party application could be a GSP (GST Suvidha Provider), ASP (Applications Service Provider), or any other ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) provider such as Tally Solutions.

Regardless of your chosen option, you should select it on the IRIS IRP portal and authorize API access accordingly.

Bottom Line

Electronic invoices have significantly streamlined the process of how businesses can generate and handle their invoices with accuracy and efficiency. However, for this process to be successful, all businesses that fall under the e-invoicing mandate with respect to their turnover should complete these six tasks without fail.