Filing ‘e-way bill‘ is common on GST portals to facilitate transporting of goods from one place to another. Similarly, the GST council introduced the system of e-invoicing for specific categories of people. 

E-invoicing is not a feature to generate invoices on the GST portal but it requires submitting an already generated invoice on the portal. Thus you can generate multiple reports with a one-time upload of invoice details. 

RealBooks is one of the best Indian accounting software that stays up-to-date with the Government mandates and provides a great platform for taxpayers to perform their e-invoicing activities. RealBooks also ensures that you can safely migrate all your data with the supported system without any change to all your archival data. 

As a comprehensive accounting software in India, RealBooks offers very easy-to-use features. Some of the most notable and useful features are:

• It is easier to keep a track of all the entries corresponding to a particular invoice through online accounting software with the help of options like document attachment and management.
• RealBooks accounting software offers direct integration with the GST portal so that your business is always GST compliant without any additional cost. 
• Being an online accounting software in India, RealBooks is easily accessible across operating systems and web browsers, allowing better remote access.
• By cutting down the charges of physical resources, benefitting from online accounting software can be very cost-effective. 
• Data integrity enhances greatly with RealBooks accounting software which is devoid of human errors. 
• E-invoicing can reduce the risk of fraudulent bills, thus enhancing trust and reliability from both the supplier and buyer’s end.
• Online accounting software can also help the human resources department in tracking the payroll advantages with unique tools for management.

What is e-invoicing under GST?

‘E-invoice’ generation is a process to identify and electrically authenticate B2B invoices by GST Network (GSTN) for common accessibility across the GST portal.

In this e-invoicing system, every transaction has a unique identification code by the Invoice Registration Portal (IRP) through the GST network. 

From the Indian accounting software portal, all the invoice details will be automatically transferred to both the GST portal and e-way bill portal, syncing in real-time. This will eliminate the requirement for manual entry while generating part-A of the e-way bills and filing GSTR-1 returns. 

What is the current system in place for issuing invoices?

Currently, businesses generate their invoices by using a variety of tools and finally uploading these invoices manually for the GSTR-1 return, instead of using single accounting software. Once this GSTR-1 return is filed, the recipients can view the invoice information in GSTR-2A. The transporters or consignors need to generate separate e-way bills by importing these invoices in JSON or Excel, manually. Businesses can reduce their effort simply by using accounting software that offers tools for GST integration and e-invoicing. 

Under the e-invoicing system now, the process of uploading and generating the invoices is the same – either by importing the excel/JSON file or through API integration. This data seamlessly flows through the entire GST portal required at various instances of e-invoicing and filing tax returns. 

How will e-invoicing benefit businesses?

E-invoicing has been introduced for the benefit of businesses, and with accounting software to automate the process, the benefits keep getting easier to grasp. Following are the advantages of using e-invoicing through GSTN:

• With the help of e-invoice, a major gap in data reconciliation for GST is plugged, while noticing an absolute reduction in mismatch errors.
• The data entry errors also reduce as the e-invoices generated by multiple software can be read by this accounting software, offering integration with the GST portal.
• All the concerned authorities involved in a business transaction can track the invoices prepared by the supplier in real-time. 
• With e-invoicing, you can quickly generate genuine reports of your tax credit. 
• All information about your business is available at the transaction level so there is less possibility of surveys and audits by the tax authorities. 
• While filing the tax return, backward integration and automation of the process can make it very simple. Required details of the invoices can also be auto-populated in multiple returns by using RealBooks Indian accounting software.

How will e-invoicing curb tax evasion?

E-invoicing is very beneficial in ensuring proper tax compliance and curbing tax evasion in the following ways:

• As the e-invoices are generated through the GST portal, the tax authorities have complete access to all the transactions happening in real-time. 
• As the invoices are generated before conducting a transaction, there are fewer chances of manipulative invoices. 
• Since the invoices are generated through the GST portal, they have GSTIN integrated on the invoices, and there cannot be any fake tax credit claim. 

In a brief conversation about RealBooks and online accounting software in India, these are the main things to know about GST e-invoicing. If you wish to learn more, visit RealBooks and sign up for our 14-days free trial to personally have an experience of this online accounting software.