If you are looking up gst filing in tally erp 9, you want the steps rather than a sales page. They are below. What follows them is a comparison you can ignore if the walkthrough was all you needed.
Getting return data out, and what still happens on the portal
The division of labour is fixed: accounting software prepares the figures, the government portal receives the return. Nothing changes that, so the work is in making the figures right.
- Close the period first. Make sure every invoice for the month is entered, and that nothing is sitting unposted.
- Run the GST return report for the period and look at the exceptions list before anything else. That list is the return.
- Clear the exceptions by category — missing or invalid party GSTIN, missing HSN or SAC, no place of supply, an unknown tax rate, vouchers with incomplete information.
- Check the invoice series for gaps and duplicates. A gap you cannot explain and a repeated number are both found later by the department rather than by you.
- Compare the outward supplies in your GSTR-1 figures against what you are about to declare in GSTR-3B. These two must agree, and the mismatch is the easiest thing in GST to spot.
- Reconcile purchases against GSTR-2B before settling the input credit figure. Claiming the register total rather than what 2B supports is the usual cause of a notice.
- Export the return data in the format the portal or your practitioner expects, then file on the portal.
Every exception on that list is a field that was missing when an invoice was raised. The fix is upstream of the return, not in it.
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 GST changes — return tables, HSN digit requirements, the e-invoicing schema — and an installation that is no longer being updated for those changes will quietly stop producing a file the portal accepts.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.
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.
Keeping both, which is often the right answer
If your accountant works in a desktop ledger and is happy there, you do not have to move them. Plenty of businesses raise invoices in one system and hand a clean summary to a practitioner working in another.
The interface between the two is a file — a GSTR-1 summary, or a CSV of invoices — not a platform commitment. Billixo exports CSV, Excel and JSON, and the export works on the free plan.
Change only the part that is actually costing you evenings.
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.
Who this actually suits
It fits a business that raises between a handful and a few hundred invoices a month and would rather not think about GST between the 10th and the 20th: traders, distributors, retail counters, workshops, agencies, consultants, contractors and manufacturers who sell on invoice.
It fits less well if you need deep manufacturing costing, multi-currency consolidation, or payroll — those are different products, and pretending otherwise wastes your evaluation time.
If you are not sure which side of that line you fall on, the free plan answers it in an afternoon at no cost. Start free now.
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
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.
Is there a simpler way to do this?
For many small businesses, yes. Billixo derives the tax split from the customer’s state automatically and needs no ledger setup at all — you enter your GSTIN once and bill. It runs in a browser, and the free plan costs ₹0 with no card.
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.
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.
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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