E-Invoicing – FAQ

1. Will businesses now be required to generate e-invoices on the GST portal or the einvoice portal or the IRN portal?

  • No, businesses will continue to generate e-invoices on their internal systems - whether ERP or their accounting / billing systems or any other application.

  • The e-invoicing mechanism only specifies the invoice schema and standard so as to be inter-operable amongst all accounting/billing software and all businesses

2. Please clarify whether there the current e-invoice schema is for the invoice to be issued by Govt or has to be maintained in the IT system by the tax payer?

  • The invoice schema has to be maintained and invoices generated using this schema by the taxpayer himself.

  • The GST portal or Invoice Registration Portal (IRP) will NOT provide facility to generate invoices. IRP is only to report the invoice data.

  • The ERP or accounting billing software or any other software tool to generate e-invoice of the seller shall only generate invoices.

3. Will there be separate invoice formats required for Traders, Medical Shops, Professionals and Contractors?

  • No, same e-invoice schema will be used by all kinds of businesses. The schema has mandatory and non-mandatory fields. Mandatory field has to be filled by all taxpayers. Non-mandatory field is for the business to choose. It covers all most all business needs and specific sectors of business may choose to use those nonmandatory field which are needed by them or their eco-system.

4. How long will the e-invoice generated would be available at the Government portal?

  • It is again clarified that the e-invoice will not be generated at the GST portal.

  • It will be generated only at the seller’s system – whether ERP or the accounting/billing system/other software tools of the seller.

  • It will be uploaded into the GST ANX-1 only once it has been validated and registered by the invoice registration system.

  • After it has been validated and is available in the ANX-1, it will be visible to the counter party in his ANX 2.

  • Thereafter it will be visible and available for the entire financial year and archived.

  • As far as data on IRP is concerned, it will be kept there only for 24 hours.

5. While all businesses generate invoice at the same time, how will the server react?

  • The businesses will generate the invoice at their system and hence that will not impact the servers of IRP.

  • The capacity of the system at IRP shall be built so as to handle the envisaged loads of simultaneous upload based on data reported in GSTR1 for last two years.

  • Subsequently, multiple invoice registrars will be made available that will be able to distribute the load for invoice registration.

6. Is it possible to auto populate fields of the e-invoice based on credentials entered?

  • Since the invoice generation is to happen at the business end, this can be built into the ERP or invoicing system of the seller. Most of such software provide this facility in the name of item master, supplier master, buyer master etc.

7. Will it be possible to add transporter details as well?

  • No, the transporter details must be entered in the E-Way bill system only.