GST Creation in Tally ERP 9, explained in the order you actually do it. Names of menu items vary by version; the sequence and the settings do not.
Switching GST on and entering your registration details
Nothing else works until this is done, and about half the "GST is not calculating" problems come from it being half-done.
- From the Gateway of Tally, open the company features screen — F11.
- Under the statutory or taxation section, set Enable Goods and Services Tax (GST) to Yes.
- Open the GST details screen when it offers to, and fill in your State, Registration type (Regular or Composition), GSTIN/UIN, and the date the registration applies from.
- Set whether e-invoicing and e-way bill features apply to you. These are separate switches and are easy to miss.
- Accept and save. Now create or edit your tax ledgers — CGST, SGST/UTGST, IGST and cess if it applies — under Duties & Taxes, with the type of duty set to GST and the correct tax type on each.
- On each stock item or sales ledger, set the GST rate and the HSN/SAC code. This is the step people skip, and it is why tax does not compute on the voucher later.
The single most common cause of "no tax on the invoice" is the rate being set at a level that is being overridden somewhere else — company, group, ledger and item can each carry GST details, and the most specific one wins.
On ERP 9 specifically
ERP 9 is the older generation and a great deal of the instructional material online was written for it, which is why its menu paths are the ones most often quoted. The accounting logic is the same; the navigation is not.
The practical issue with staying on it is support rather than capability. GST changes — return tables, HSN digit requirements, the e-invoicing schema — and an installation that is no longer being updated for those changes will quietly stop producing a file the portal accepts. That is discovered at a filing deadline rather than in advance.
So the question worth asking is not whether it still works but whether your release is still being updated for compliance. If it is not, the risk is specific and dated, and it sits on the person filing.
If you are on an old release and intend to stay there, at minimum verify each period that the return data it produces is still in the format currently required, rather than assuming last year's export is this year's.
When this is worth doing differently
None of the above is difficult. It is just a lot of setup that has to stay correct, on a machine that has to stay working, maintained by someone who remembers how it was configured.
That is a reasonable cost for a business with an accountant on staff and a stable office. It is a poor fit for a business where the person billing is also the person selling, and where the office computer is whatever laptop is nearest.
Billixo takes the other approach: the GST details are entered once when you sign up, the tax split is derived from the customer’s state on every invoice with nothing to configure, and there is no installation to maintain. It runs in a browser, and the free plan costs ₹0 with no card.
That is not an argument that one is better. It is an argument that they suit different situations, and it is worth knowing which one you are in.
The same job, without the setup
In Billixo, the equivalent of everything above is: enter your GSTIN and state once at signup, put the HSN on a product when you create it, and select the customer when you bill.
The tax heads are not ledgers you create — they are derived from the place of supply against your registration state, every time, with no dropdown to get wrong. The GST summaries are a report you download rather than a screen you have to clear.
You can test that claim in about ten minutes on the free plan without installing anything. Start free now, or open the demo.
Invoice numbering: one unbroken series per year
The invoice number has to be consecutive, unique within the financial year, and no more than sixteen characters of letters, numbers, slashes and hyphens. Gaps invite questions. Duplicates cause them.
This is the single most common reason a spreadsheet-based billing setup fails an audit: two people billing on two machines, both starting from the last number they remember. A system that issues the number centrally cannot make that mistake.
The series restarts on 1 April, and Billixo restarts it for you rather than waiting to be told.
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.
Bill scanning, in practice
The single largest time cost in most small businesses is not raising invoices — it is entering purchases. A photograph of a supplier bill goes in and a structured draft comes out: supplier, GSTIN, line items, rates, tax split and total.
You check it. That is the workflow, and it is deliberate: an extraction you did not read is a liability, not a saving. But checking a filled form takes fifteen seconds and typing one takes three minutes, and that difference compounds over a month of purchases.
Who it is built for
Small and mid-sized Indian businesses that are registered under GST and bill regularly. One person doing everything, or a counter with three people billing at once and an accountant who needs the month to close cleanly.
The design assumption throughout is that whoever raises the invoice is busy and is not a tax specialist. So the tax is computed rather than asked for, the compliance fields are populated rather than presented as questions, and the report the accountant wants is a download rather than a request.
Try it free — the free plan needs no card and does not expire.
What "free" means here, exactly
The Free plan costs nothing, needs no card, and has no expiry date. It is not a trial that turns into a bill; it is a plan you can run a small business on indefinitely.
What it gives you:
- Real GST invoices with the full Rule 46 field set
- Customers and products, with HSN/SAC held against each
- A daily and monthly invoice allowance, generous enough for a small operation
- One login
- Export of your own data, whenever you want it
What it does not give you:
- A watermark-free PDF
- GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B export
- The AI features — bill scanning, HSN lookup, the assistant
- Extra team logins, bulk import, recurring invoices and reminders
Every new account also gets the full paid feature set for its first 14 days, so you can see what the ceiling looks like before deciding whether you need it. When that ends nothing is charged and nothing is deleted — the account simply settles onto Free.
Start free now — it takes an email address and about a minute.
Reliability, backups and getting your data out
Cloud billing software is only as good as its worst day. Two things matter more than any feature list: that your data is backed up somewhere you can reach, and that you can export it in a format something else can read.
Exports here are CSV, Excel and JSON, on every plan including the free one, covering customers, products, invoices and payments. That is the honest test of whether software respects you — not what it promises, but what it lets you take when you leave.
Frequently asked questions
Why is GST not calculating on my invoice?
Nine times out of ten a master is incomplete: the stock item has no rate or no HSN, the party ledger has no state, or the tax ledgers are not set to the right tax type. Because the most specific setting wins, a rate set at item level will also silently override one set at company level.
Why did an inter-state sale come out as CGST and SGST?
The place of supply on the voucher, or the state on the party ledger, does not match. Correct it on the party master rather than on the voucher, otherwise the next invoice to that customer repeats the error.
Do the menu paths differ between Tally.ERP 9 and TallyPrime?
The wording does — TallyPrime reorganised the menus and renamed several screens — but the sequence is the same: enable GST on the company, set up tax ledgers, put HSN and rates on masters, record the voucher, then clear the GST reports.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. It is a browser application that adapts to the screen, so the same account works from a desktop at the counter and a phone in the market. There is no separate app to keep in step.
Can more than one person use it?
On the paid plans, yes — team logins with their own credentials. The Free plan is a single login, which suits a one-person operation and is usually the first limit a growing business hits.
Try it — the demo is the product
There is no sales call and no scheduled demo, because a recorded walkthrough of somebody else’s data tells you nothing about your own. Open an account instead and raise a real invoice for a real customer; it takes about a minute and costs nothing.
Open the software demo → — sign in, or create a free account from the same screen.
See full details on the home page → — features, the AI, pricing and the answers to the usual questions.
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