If you are looking up gst tally invoice format, 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.
Recording a GST sales entry
Assuming GST is enabled and your ledgers carry rates and HSN codes, the entry itself is short.
- From the Gateway of Tally, open Vouchers and choose the sales voucher — F8.
- Set the voucher to invoice mode if it is not already there, so it prints as a tax invoice rather than a voucher.
- Enter the invoice number and date. The number should continue your consecutive series for the financial year.
- Select the party ledger. Confirm the despatch and buyer details, and check the place of supply — this is the field that decides CGST+SGST versus IGST.
- Select the sales ledger, then enter each stock item with quantity and rate.
- Select the tax ledgers. With rates set on the items, the amounts fill themselves; if they do not, the rate or the HSN is missing somewhere up the chain.
- Check the tax split at the bottom, then accept and print or export the invoice.
If CGST and SGST appear on a sale to another state, the place of supply or the party’s state is wrong. Fix the master rather than editing the voucher, or the next invoice repeats it.
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.
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.
HSN and SAC codes, and how many digits you need
Every line on a tax invoice needs an HSN code for goods or a SAC for services. How many digits depends on your aggregate turnover in the preceding financial year — smaller businesses report fewer digits than larger ones, and B2B and B2C invoices are treated differently.
Because the requirement is tied to turnover and has been tightened in stages, the practical answer is to store the fullest code you can against each product once, and let the software report at the level required. A six-digit code can always be truncated; a two-digit one cannot be expanded.
Billixo keeps the code on the product record and carries it onto every line automatically, and its AI HSN lookup will suggest one from a plain description when you genuinely do not know.
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.
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.
Free, and what it costs you instead
Free software usually costs you something that is not money: your data held hostage, an export that does not work, ads inside your invoice, or a "free" tier so narrow it is a demo with a login screen.
The line here is drawn differently. Export works on the free plan — CSV, Excel and JSON — because data you cannot get out is not data you own. The invoice is a real compliant invoice, not a sample. The limits are on volume and on the conveniences, not on whether the thing works.
Start free now. If it does not suit you, take your data with you.
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
Will I lose my data if I move?
No. Export your party and item lists to CSV or Excel, import them in one pass, and carry unpaid invoices as opening balances. Keep the old system readable for a year — most businesses never migrate historic invoices at all.
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.
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.
Start free, decide later
You do not have to choose a plan to begin. Start on Free, use it for as long as it suits you, and upgrade only when a limit actually gets in your way — never automatically, and never because a countdown ran out.
Open the software demo → — or create the free account from the same page.
Read the full details → on the home page, including pricing and the AI features.
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