New Delhi: GST e-invoice system, the game changer in the GST system, has completed journey of three months and has facilitated smooth transition of the tax payers to the new platform. It has enabled more than 37000 tax payers to generate more than 1,680 lakh Invoice Reference Numbers (IRNs), during last three months from the NIC developed e-Invoice system.

Starting with 495 lakh during October 2020, the generation of e-invoice has increased to 589 lakh in November 2020 and 603 lakh in December 2020. Interestingly, the e-way bill generation from the NIC or National Informatics Centre developed e-way bill system is also highest during September to December 2020 compared to same months of previous years.

 According to an official statement, the response of the system is good and generation of IRNs is hassle-free during this period. However, there have been common errors such as repeated requests on same document number, simultaneous requests on same document number, request with validation or calculation errors, etc. Proactive measures taken by the NIC Help desk, including communication with tax payers about the issues through mails and telephonic calls and suggestion of corrective measures, has facilitated in bringing the errors down. NIC has also started sending the daily update to the generators of IRN about the number and value of the IRN generated by him/her.

The Central government has reduced the aggregate turnover cut off to Rs 100 crore per annum for generation of IRN by the tax payers from January 1, 2021. The NIC has already enabled the API and offline tool based sites for these tax payers. NIC is also geared up with adequate infrastructure to handle the generation of e-invoices from these tax payers from January 1, 2021.

The NIC portal facilitates the big tax payers, whose turnover is more than Rs 500 crore, to enable direct API access to their suppliers and clients from their systems. Keeping requirements of small tax payers in view, NIC has developed the offline Excel based IRN preparation and printing tool, called as NIC-GePP tool for the small tax payers. This application will allow the tax payers to enter the invoice details, prepare the file to upload on NIC IRN portal, download the IRN with QR code and print the e-invoice with QR code. /BI/