The mandatory fields are those that MUST be there for an invoice to be valid under e-Invoice Standard.
The optional ones are those that may be needed for the specific business needs of the seller/business. These have been incorporated in the schema based on current business practices in India.
The registration of an e-invoice will only be possible once it has ALL the mandatory fields uploaded into the Invoice registration Portal (IRP).
A mandatory field not having any value can be reported with NIL.
This will be notified by the Government at the time of rollout.
As already mentioned above, the rollout of the e-invoice mechanism will be in phases.
The IRN (hash) will be generated by GST System using GSTIN of supplier or document creator, financial year and the unique serial number of the document/invoice. The IRN can also be generated by the seller.
The serial number of invoice will be unique for a GSTIN for a Fin Year and the same has to be captured by Supplier’s ERP.
Supplier has to keep the IRN against each of its invoice. It will be advisable to keep the same in the ERP as invoice without IRN will not be a legal document.
Not mandatory. However, if a signed e-invoice is sent to IRP, the same will be accepted.
The e-invoice will be digitally signed by the IRP after it has been validated. The signed e-invoice along with QR code will be shared with creator of document as well as the recipient.
Once it is registered, it will not be required to be signed by anyone else.
The e-invoice has a provision for capturing discount at line item level.
The discounting at line item level is to be mentioned only when and if it is applicable in the particular transaction.
There will NOT be a place holder provided in the e-invoice schema for the company logo.
This is for the software company to provide in the billing/accounting software so that it can be printed on his invoice using his printer. However, the Logo will not be sent to IRP. In other words, it will not be part of JSON file to be uploaded on the IRP.
The QR code will be provided to the seller once he uploads the invoice into the Invoice Registration system and the same is registered there.
Seller can at his option may print the same on Invoice.
Yes, the supplier will issue his own system’s invoice, in the standard e-invoice schema that has been published. Invoice number is a mandatory item under GST and hence for e-invoice.
IRN (Hash) can be provided after the e-invoice has been successfully reported to the IRP. E-Invoice will be valid only if it has IRN.