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Writing about GST and bookkeeping, for the people doing it
39 articles for business owners and CAs. No filler, no invented statistics, and every claim about AawazAI is something the product actually does.
- Latest
- GST and compliance (13)
- Billing and invoices (3)
- Bookkeeping (5)
- Money and stock (3)
- By business type (3)
- Using AawazAI (8)
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Latest
Most recent first
The 6 newest articles. Everything else is grouped by subject below.
- 57th GST Council meeting: what was decided, and what is not law yetGST and compliance
- E-way bill checks are set to change. The e-way bill itself is notGST and compliance
- Input tax credit and refunds: what the 57th GST Council proposedGST and compliance
- No arrest, smaller penalties, fewer notices: what the GST Council proposedGST and compliance
- Your Swiggy payout never matches your sales. Here is where the money goesBy business type
- The ₹6.84 lakh bill that waits 45 days: running a distributor's booksBy business type
17 articles
GST and compliance
Registration, returns, rates, credit and the documents that carry them.
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57th GST Council meeting: what was decided, and what is not law yet
The Council recommended no arrest under GST, lower penalties, wider input tax credit, faster refunds and fewer e-way bill stops. None of it is in force yet. The full list, with the three forward dates that are stated.
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E-way bill checks are set to change. The e-way bill itself is not
No random stops, no detention in a state the goods only pass through, and no confiscation in transit. That is the proposal. You still need the e-way bill, and a truck without one can be held anywhere.
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Input tax credit and refunds: what the 57th GST Council proposed
Credit on health and life insurance, outdoor catering and free samples. Inverted duty refunds that count credit on input services. Ninety per cent of a low-risk refund claim sanctioned by the system. All proposed, none in force.
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No arrest, smaller penalties, fewer notices: what the GST Council proposed
Arrest powers withdrawn, prosecution only above ₹5 crore, the general penalty cut to ₹10,000 and no demand notice below ₹10,000 of tax. What each proposal says, and why none of it protects you yet.
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GST late fees, interest and penalties: what a delay costs
Three separate charges hide behind the phrase late filing: the late fee, the interest, and the penalty. They are calculated differently and only one of them has a cap.
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GST rates in India after the September 2025 change
The rate structure was rationalised on 22 September 2025. Here is what the slabs are now, what moved, and how to check a single item rather than guess from a table.
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E-invoicing under GST: who has to generate an IRN
E-invoicing does not change your invoice format, it adds a step: the invoice is registered with the government portal and comes back with a number and a QR code. Here is who has to do it.
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Reverse charge under GST: when the buyer pays the tax
Normally the seller collects GST and pays it. Under reverse charge you do, on purchases you made. Here are the cases you will actually meet and the paperwork each one needs.
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E-way bill: when you need one, and for how long it lasts
Most consignments over ₹50,000 need one before the goods move. What goes in Part A and Part B, how long it lasts, and what happens if the truck is delayed.
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Place of supply: CGST and SGST, or IGST?
One decision on every invoice: same-state or inter-state. Get it wrong and your buyer holds credit of the wrong type, which is a harder problem than paying the wrong amount.
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GST return due dates: the calendar a small business actually needs
Six dates decide your month. Here they are for monthly filers and for QRMP, what each return does, and what it costs to be late.
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Do you need to register for GST? The thresholds explained
Turnover is the usual trigger, but it is not the only one. Here are the limits for goods and services, the cases where turnover does not matter at all, and when registering early is the cheaper choice.
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The GST composition scheme: who it suits and what it costs
Less paperwork and a flat rate on turnover, in exchange for no input credit and no tax charged to your customers. Whether that trade is good depends on who your customers are.
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Credit notes and debit notes under GST
A sale changes after the invoice is out: goods come back, a rate was wrong, a discount was agreed. You do not edit the invoice, you raise a note. Which one, by when, and what happens to the tax.
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Input tax credit: when you can claim it, and when you cannot
Credit is the difference between paying tax on your margin and paying tax on your turnover. Four conditions decide whether you get it, and one list decides where you never will.
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GSTR-1 vs GSTR-3B: what goes where, and why they must agree
One return lists your sales invoice by invoice. The other summarises the month and takes the payment. They are filled from the same books, and the department notices when they disagree.
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Documents required for GST registration in India
What to keep ready for a GST registration application, by business type: PAN and identity, premises proof for owned, rented, home and co-working addresses, constitution documents, authorisation and Aadhaar.
3 articles
Billing and invoices
The documents you hand a customer, and the fields that make them valid.
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Delivery challan: when goods move without an invoice
Job work, goods sent on approval, a delivery in parts, stock moved between your own branches. In each case the goods move before the sale is fixed, and the document that travels with them is a delivery challan.
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Proforma invoice vs tax invoice: which one to send
A customer wants a document before they commit. Send the wrong one and you have either created a tax liability you did not intend, or lost the order to paperwork.
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GST invoice format: every field a tax invoice must carry
Rule 46 lists what a tax invoice has to show. Here is that list in plain words, the serial-number rule that trips people up, and an example you can hold your own bill against.
5 articles
Bookkeeping
How the records fit together, and what the reports are telling you.
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Switching accounting or billing software in the middle of a year
Most advice says wait for 1 April. Most people cannot, because the reason they want to move is that the current system is failing them now. Here is how to do it without a mess.
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Reading a profit and loss statement when you run the shop
Your CA hands you a P&L once a year and you nod. Here is how to read it in five minutes, and which two lines actually tell you whether the shop is working.
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Purchase bills: what to keep, for how long, and why
A purchase bill is not paperwork, it is money: input tax credit, an expense deduction, and the proof behind both. Here is what to keep and for how long.
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Computerised accounting vs manual accounting
Registers, spreadsheets, accounting software and AI. What each actually changes for an Indian business, and how to decide which part of the workflow to automate first.
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Day book, cash book and ledger: what each one is for
Four words that get used interchangeably and mean four different things. Knowing which is which is the difference between keeping records and keeping books.
3 articles
Money and stock
Udhaar, stock and the difference between profit and cash.
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Closing stock: how to value it and why it decides your profit
Closing stock is the one number a shop can get wrong by a lot without noticing, and it moves your profit rupee for rupee.
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Why a profitable shop runs out of cash
Your books say you made money. Your bank says otherwise. Both are right, and the gap between them has five usual causes.
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Udhaar that comes back: how to give credit without losing money
Every trade in India runs on udhaar. The shops that survive it are not the ones that give less credit, they are the ones that write it down the moment it happens and follow up on a schedule.
8 articles
Using AawazAI
What the app and the CA workspace actually do, step by step.
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Why we built voice entry instead of a faster form
Every app in this category has spent years shaving taps off the sale screen. It is the wrong race, and you can tell because the books are still empty at month end.
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Tally or a phone app? What a small shop actually needs
This is not a question with one answer. It depends on who is going to do the data entry, and almost nobody asks that first.
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A khata app tracks who owes you. It does not give you books
Khata apps did one thing and did it properly: they replaced a paper diary of who owes what. The trouble starts when you need the other things a business needs, and discover none of them are there.
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Is AawazAI right for your business? An honest answer
Most software pages answer this with yes. Here is the version with the cases where the answer is no, and what to use instead.
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A billing app makes invoices. That is not the same as books
Every GST billing app in India can print a correct invoice. What separates them is what the invoice becomes afterwards, and that is the part the feature lists never cover.
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A photo of a supplier bill, and what the app does with it
Most purchase bills arrive as paper on a counter and leave as a pile nobody enters. Photographing one is the cheapest way to stop losing the credit on it. Here is what happens to the photo.
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How a CA runs a filing season in AawazAI for CAs
Filing season is not hard because the returns are hard. It is hard because twenty clients send twenty kinds of mess in the same week. This is how the workspace handles that.
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Bookkeeping by voice: what happens after you speak
The useful question about voice bookkeeping is not whether the app hears you. It is what it does next, and whether you can undo it. Here is the whole path from a sentence to a ledger entry.
3 articles
By business type
A day in the life for restaurants, wholesalers and service firms, with real lakh-scale numbers.
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Your Swiggy payout never matches your sales. Here is where the money goes
Tables, split bills, tips, 5% or 18% GST, liquor and the aggregator payout that never matches. How a restaurant or cloud kitchen keeps each on its own line.
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The ₹6.84 lakh bill that waits 45 days: running a distributor's books
Sales orders, salesman, credit days and ageing, IGST, e-way bills and keyboard-fast billing, ending in a CA pack. A distributor's day, with real lakh-scale numbers.
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You worked 38 hours for a client last month. Did you bill all 38?
Job cards with client, matter and hours, timesheets, the TDS clients deduct and monthly retainers. How a consultant, agency or professional firm stops hours leaking.