ClearTax launches GST ready Bill book for SMEs, professionals and others

India's largest Income Tax returns e-filing and enterprise compliance service provider ClearTax has announced the launch of Bill book software for SMEs.

ClearTax's GST Bill book is free of cost software platform for preparing GST-compliant invoices. With this first-of-its-kind platform for small businesses in India, ClearTax plans to reach out to about 10 lakh SMEs across the country.

The Bill book for SMEs is a ready-to-use software platform that works both online and offline. A new billing solution is needed in the GST era. While making the sales and purchase for getting the input tax credit GSTIN needs to be recorded. The GST Bill book will automatically identify IGST vs SGST in the invoice. The GST Bill book will help in curbing the tedious task of uploading to GSTN every month.

ClearTax Bill book can accommodate business scenarios such as operating in different States in India or engaging in imports and exports or B2B or B2C billing. The software has the competency to handle debit/credit notes and advance payments.

The GST bill book supports key features needed for SMEs such as creating a sales invoice, recording of discount, freight, insurance, and package handling charges. In addition to creating sales bills, it can be used to record purchases and expenses under GST regime. It will also support other documents mandated by GST such as delivery challan, e-way bill, advance payment receipts etc.

"In a demographically diverse country like India, SMEs have been highly instrumental in generating employment and ensuring a balanced development across sectors and geographies. The Bill book for SMEs is a completely electronic solution to help these businesses do GST compliance in the simplest manner with minimum interventions. This will ensure that compliance does not impede the growth of their business," said founder and CEO ClearTax.com, Archit Gupta.

There are about three million SMEs in India contributing almost 50% of the total industrial output and 42% of India's total exports. GST is expected to make invoicing and data analytics easier and more credible, thus creating opportunities to secure credit for both SMEs and lenders.

This will be possible as tax filings on the GSTN will be used as an important data source for flow-based lending. This will also help make SMEs in the country more competitive, creating a level playing field between large enterprises and the small businesses. Furthermore, Indian SMEs will be able to compete with foreign competition from cheap cost centres such as China, Philippines and Bangladesh.