Thinking of a software to manage E-Way Bills? Here's what you should know

The implementation of GST has evolved considerably ever since it was launched in July 2017. The journey towards One Nation, One Tax now envelopes India’s vast network of highways which aid the transportation of goods day and night.

E-Way Bills will play a pivotal role in setting a unified benchmark for businesses across India when they engage in the transportation of goods. Under GST, it is mandatory for a transporter to carry an e-Way Bill when moving goods worth more than Rs. 50,000 between two states or even within a state*. The transporter has to carry the invoice and the copy of the e-Way Bill as evidence.

Depending on who initiates the movement of goods, an e-Way Bill can be issued by either a registered dealer or a transporter.

How to generate e-Way Bills? How will they impact my business?
If you are a business owner, you probably have the above questions in your mind.

Technology being an enabler, must simplify e-Way Bill compliance for the thousands of business owners, transporters, distributors, manufacturers and logistics providers across India. This essentially means that it must be easy to use. The technology must work in different IT infrastructure environments. It must work with speed and be so flexible that it can accommodate unexpected business scenarios.

Let us look at some of the important points you must keep in mind with respect to the performance of your e-Way Bill software.

An efficient start
To generate an e-Way Bill, you have to furnish invoice level details and transportation details in the e-Way Bill portal. One of the ways to do this is to record invoice details in your software, upload the data onto to the portal, key in the transportation details and generate e-Way Bill. The e-Way Bill will display the e-Way Bill Number (EBN) on it.

Alternately, you can also key in both the invoice and transportation details in the e-Way Bill portal to generate e-Way Bill. As a business owner, you of course have to record the invoice back in your software for the purpose of bookkeeping. Would you re-enter all the details again? If your software is efficient, it can help avoid repetition of this activity.

An efficient software will allow you to enter both invoice and transportation details at the time of creating the invoice itself and make it simple for you. All you have to do is to upload the data in the portal and generate e-Way Bill. You should be able to switch between the software and the e-Way Bill portal as and when required.

GST Compliance
Have a long list of invoices? How will you know which of these qualify for e-Way Bills and which ones don’t? Your software must do this for you and help you comply with GST. Your software must let you track invoices easily and identify invoices for which e-Way Bills are yet to be generated.

Generate consolidated e-Way Bills
To simplify the life of a transporter, the commercial tax department allows for the generation of a single consolidated e-Way Bill for a given set of e-Way Bills if the mode of transport, vehicle number, place of supply and state are the same. But first, you must generate e-Way Bills of such invoices individually, group the e-Way Bills and generate a consolidated e-Way Bill.

Let’s understand this by way of an example. An e-commerce operator has to dispatch goods to 10 of its customers, living in place A. It will be convenient for the transporter to carry a single consolidated e-Way Bill to transport these goods. Your software must help you accommodate all the steps mentioned in the above paragraph.

Flexibility
Businesses in India are as diverse as our sub-continent. Business situations can be unpredictable too. If your supplier’s internet connection is not working, you should be able to create the purchase invoice and generate the e-Way Bill quickly.

Since an unregistered dealer cannot generate e-Way Bills, your software should help you to do so when you make a purchase from an unregistered dealer.

Some distributors typically respond to business orders on demand. They have to generate invoices more often and dispatch goods instantly as soon as they receive orders. For example: A white goods distributor who has to dispatch refrigerators throughout the day must be able to generate e-Way Bills as soon as he receives the orders.

Some businesses prefer to dispatch goods only in the morning hours. For example: An FMCG distributor dispatches goods to shops in a particular locality at one go. In such a case, he will generate their e-Way Bills at one go.

Technology must give you the flexibility to generate e-Way Bills anytime. It must let you generate a solo or multiple e-Way Bill in a single instance or a consolidated e-Way Bill by grouping e-Way Bills of a given set of invoices.

Generate e-Way Bills for credit, delivery and receipt notes
A consignment cannot always be based on a sale invoice. Depending on the type of transaction and nature of business, it can be based on credit notes, delivery notes or receipt notes. Your software must help generate e-Way Bills for these forms of consignments as well.

If you’re looking for a software which meets all these requirements, you may consider Tally.ERP 9 . When you create an invoice in Tally.ERP 9, it allows you to capture all the mandatory details required for generating e-Way Bill, at the very same instance. All you are required to do is to upload this data to in the e-Way Bill portal for generating the e-Way Bill.

Tally.ERP 9 helps manage e-Way Bills efficiently. It helps save time and reduce operational effort. It gives a great deal of flexibility while taking care of compliance. You can add, modify, delete, consolidate and track e-Way Bills. You can update existing invoices in case the mode of transport changes and generate a new e-Way Bill.

Come what may, e-Way Bills are soon going to become a necessary part of India’s businesses. Get ready!


*Some states have made this a mandate, some are yet to. The e-Way Bill is expected to go live for all inter-state movement of goods from April 1, 2018 as announced by the Group of Ministers (GoM).