Most of the pain in free gst return software is not the filing. It is the reconstruction beforehand — fixing invoices that were raised without the fields the return needs. This page is about removing that work rather than speeding it up.
The returns, and what each one is for
GSTR-1 is the statement of outward supplies — what you billed, to whom, with what tax. It is the return your customers depend on, because what you report here is what shows up in their input credit.
GSTR-3B is the summary return with the net tax position and the credit claimed, filed alongside payment.
GSTR-2A and 2B are not filed by you at all. They are what your suppliers reported about you, and reconciling your purchases against 2B is what decides how much input credit you actually get.
GSTR-9 is the annual return, which is mostly a consolidation of what was already filed — and painful in exact proportion to how loose the monthly filings were.
Due dates vary by return, by turnover and by whether you are on a monthly or quarterly scheme, and they have been revised more than once. Check the portal for the dates that apply to you.
Free filing software: what is actually free
Worth separating three things that get bundled under "free", because only one of them is in question.
Filing on the portal is free. The government charges nothing to submit a return. Anything you pay is for preparing the figures or for somebody else's time, never for the act of filing.
Preparing the figures is where software earns money, and it is the part most "free" offers limit — usually by number of returns, number of GSTINs, or by giving you the summary but not the reconciliation. The reconciliation against GSTR-2B is the piece that actually saves time, so it is the one to check for.
Being late is not free, and it is the cost most people actually incur. A late fee runs per day per return up to a cap, and interest runs separately on tax paid late. Software that gets the figures ready on time saves more than its price in that alone.
Here, billing is free at ₹0 with no card and no expiry — complete tax invoices, customers, items, stock and receivables. The GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B exports and the 2B reconciliation are on the paid plans, and every new account gets them for its first fortnight.
What Billixo does for return time
- Mandatory fields cannot be skipped. GSTIN, place of supply, HSN and the tax split are captured on the invoice, not reconstructed later.
- Tax split derived, not chosen. Inter-state is IGST because the customer’s state says so, not because someone picked it.
- A consecutive invoice series issued centrally, restarting each financial year — no gaps, no duplicates, whoever is billing.
- GSTR-1 summary of outward supplies, B2B and B2C separated, with the HSN summary.
- GSTR-3B summary of the net position.
- Credit and debit notes that reference the original invoice properly.
- Exports in CSV, Excel and JSON that a practitioner can open without repairing the file.
- Everything scoped to a period, so a month can be closed and looked at again later without ambiguity.
A month-end sequence that works
- On the 1st, stop billing into the closed month. A cut-off that everyone respects removes more problems than any software feature.
- Check the invoice series for the month — no gaps, no duplicates, and the last number continues into the new month.
- Review B2B invoices for a missing or malformed GSTIN. These are the ones that cost your customer credit.
- Review anything billed to another state and confirm it carries IGST.
- Confirm every line has an HSN or SAC.
- Download the GSTR-1 summary and reconcile the total to your own sales figure for the month.
- Reconcile purchases against the downloaded GSTR-2B, and chase suppliers who have not filed.
- Hand the summaries to whoever files, with the reconciliation working file attached.
Late filing, and why it compounds
Late fees and interest are the visible cost. The larger cost is that a late GSTR-1 delays your customers’ input credit, and business customers notice.
The other compounding effect is internal: a month that was not closed properly makes the next month harder to close, because you are now reconciling two. Three months of that and the annual return becomes a project.
Closing on time is mostly about the data being ready on the 1st, which is a billing problem, not a filing one.
What your CA actually wants from you
Not access to your software. A complete, correct outward supply summary in a file they can open, and a purchase list that reconciles to 2B.
The most common complaint from practitioners is not that a client uses the wrong product. It is that the data was never captured — GSTINs missing, place of supply guessed, HSN blank — and no amount of skill at the filing end recovers that.
A billing system that makes those fields unavoidable is worth more to your accountant than one with better reports.
Credit notes, debit notes, and fixing a wrong invoice
An issued tax invoice is not something to edit. If the value was too high, or goods came back, the correction is a credit note that references the original invoice. If it was too low, a debit note. Both carry their own numbers and both appear in your return.
There is a deadline on the credit note that matters: the adjustment has to be declared by the return for the relevant month of the following financial year, or by the annual return, whichever comes first. Past that, the note exists commercially but the tax cannot be adjusted.
Software that lets you quietly retype an invoice raised last month is not doing you a favour.
Reverse charge, exports and the supplies that behave differently
Not every supply is a straightforward taxable sale. Some notified supplies put the tax liability on the recipient rather than the supplier. Exports and supplies to an SEZ can be made under a bond or LUT without payment of tax, or with tax and a refund claimed afterwards. Composition dealers cannot charge tax at all and must say so on the bill.
Each of these changes what the invoice has to say — the reverse charge marking, the LUT reference, the "composition taxable person" declaration. They are not exotic cases; most businesses hit at least one.
The fields are on the invoice in Billixo whether or not you use them, so the day you need one you are not looking for a workaround.
The AI, and what it is actually for
The useful application of AI to billing is not a chatbot. It is the twenty minutes a day spent retyping things that already exist on paper.
- Scan a supplier bill. Photograph it; the lines, the GSTIN, the tax and the totals come back as a draft you check rather than a form you fill.
- Find the HSN code. Describe the product in plain words and get a code to confirm, instead of scrolling a list of eleven thousand.
- Ask about your own numbers. "What is outstanding over sixty days?" answered from your data, not a manual.
- Write the reminder. A polite, specific chase for an overdue invoice, ready to send on WhatsApp.
Nothing is sent anywhere until you ask for it, and the platform runs on whichever model it has been configured with — including one hosted on your own server.
Where this fits in a working day
Morning: yesterday’s supplier bills get photographed and become purchase records. Through the day: invoices go out as goods do, shared on WhatsApp before the customer has left. End of the week: the receivables list says who to call. End of the month: the GST summary is a download, not a project.
None of that requires a new habit, which is the point. A billing system that needs discipline to work is one that stops working the first busy week.
The price, plainly
Free is ₹0 and stays ₹0. The paid plans are bought for a fixed term, paid once, with no auto-renewal and no card kept on file — when a term ends the account drops back to Free until you decide to buy again.
There is no per-invoice charge, no per-user surprise on the free plan, and no feature that is technically included but practically throttled. What the plan says you get is what you get.
Compare the plans on the home page, or just start free now and look at the ceiling from the inside.
Where your data lives
On the server this platform is installed on. Every record carries a company identifier and every query is scoped to the signed-in account at the framework level, so one business cannot read another’s data by any route, including a crafted one.
Sign-in is rate limited, sessions can be restricted to one device per user, and passwords are stored hashed. Exports are available on every plan, free included: if you ever want to leave, your data leaves with you.
Frequently asked questions
Is the GST return export available on the free plan?
No. The Free plan produces fully compliant invoices, but GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B export is a paid feature. Every new account gets the full paid feature set for its first 14 days, so you can see the export before deciding.
What is the difference between GSTR-2A and GSTR-2B?
2A moves as your suppliers file, so it is a live view. 2B is generated for a period and is static, which is why credit eligibility is worked out against 2B. Reconcile against 2B and use 2A to understand why something is missing.
Why does my GSTR-1 not match my sales figure?
Usually a cut-off problem — invoices raised into a closed period — or credit notes not referencing the invoices they correct. Occasionally it is a B2B supply that landed in B2C because the customer GSTIN was missing.
Will my accountant be able to work with it?
That is what the GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B summaries are for. They export in formats a practitioner can open and reconcile without repairing the file first — which, in practice, is most of what a CA wants from a client’s billing software.
What happens to my data if I stop paying?
Nothing is deleted. The account settles back onto the Free plan: the paid conveniences switch off, the volume limits return, and every invoice, customer and product you created stays exactly where it is — including the export.
See it working on your own bills
The fastest way to judge billing software is to bill with it. Photograph one supplier invoice, raise one sales invoice, and look at the PDF your customer would receive.
Open the software demo → — free account, no card, about a minute to set up.
More details on the home page → — what it does, what it costs, and where the limits are.
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