AssembloERP
Compliance content usually goes one of two ways: a lecture on the law, or a feature list. Neither helps you choose software. What helps is a set of specific questions, and knowing what the correct answer sounds like.
Written July 2026. GST rules change; treat the thresholds below as a starting point and confirm your own position with your CA before acting.
Where you stand
e-Invoicing applies to GST-registered businesses whose aggregate annual turnover crossed Rs 5 crore in any financial year from 2017-18 onward, for B2B supplies, exports and certain government supplies. Two consequences that catch people out:
- It is historic, not current. If you touched Rs 5 crore once in any of those years, you are in — even if this year is smaller.
- There is a reporting clock. Businesses at Rs 10 crore and above must report invoices to the IRP within 30 days of the invoice date. Miss it and the invoice cannot be registered, which lands on your buyer as a lost input credit and on you as an awkward phone call.
Aggregate turnover means across all your GSTINs on the same PAN. Multi-entity businesses regularly get this wrong by looking at one unit.
The 12 questions to ask any ERP vendor
- Does it generate an IRN through the IRP directly, or export a file I have to upload?
- What happens when the portal rejects an invoice — does it queue and retry, or fail silently?
- Can it handle multiple GSTINs on one PAN, with separate numbering series?
- Are HSN codes mandatory fields on the item master, or optional and therefore blank?
- Does it produce e-way bills from the same invoice, including ship-to GSTIN details?
- Can it print a credit note that correctly references the original IRN?
- Does it support job-work challans with the material description and reconciliation?
- Can I produce a GSTR-1 summary that ties to my sales register without manual adjustment?
- Does it flag mismatches against GSTR-2B on purchases?
- Is the audit trail immutable — who edited what, when — and can I export it?
- What is the process on a portal outage during dispatch hours?
- Who updates the software when the rules change, and is that included?
Question 11 is the one that separates products built in India for Indian conditions from products that treat compliance as a checkbox.
The documentation trail, end to end
| Movement | Document | The usual failure |
|---|---|---|
| Sale, B2B | e-Invoice with IRN + QR | Reported late, past the 30-day window |
| Goods in transit | e-Way bill | Ship-to GSTIN missing or wrong |
| Material to job worker | Delivery challan | Never reconciled on return |
| Return from job worker | Receipt against challan | Booked as a fresh receipt, unlinked |
| Sales return | Credit note referencing IRN | Issued without the original reference |
| Purchase | GRN + supplier invoice | No GSTR-2B reconciliation |
The job-work rows are where compliance and operations meet. If those challans are not reconciled, you have both a stock problem and a documentation problem — we go through the mechanics in job work without leakage.
What good looks like in software
Two principles. First, no retyping — data entered once at the invoice should reach the IRP and the e-way bill portal without a human copying it. Every manual re-entry is a future mismatch. Second, failures must be loud: a rejected invoice should sit in a visible queue with the portal's reason attached, not disappear into a log.
If you are choosing a system now, run these questions alongside the commercial ones in our cost breakdown. And if you are moving off an existing setup, verify GST settings during the parallel month rather than after go-live.
This is general information, not tax advice. Your CA is the authority on your specific position.
