GSTR 2A and 2B is the job that decides how much input credit you actually keep. This page covers the method that works, the four kinds of mismatch, and — more usefully — how to stop generating most of them in the first place.
2A and 2B, and why the difference matters
GSTR-2A is dynamic. It reflects what your suppliers have reported about you, and it keeps changing as they file. Useful for understanding, useless as a basis for a decision, because it will be different tomorrow.
GSTR-2B is generated for a period and does not move. That stability is why credit eligibility is worked out against it.
The practical rule: reconcile against 2B, and use 2A to work out why something in 2B is missing.
GSTR-2A and 2B: the difference, and which to use
They describe the same underlying thing — what your suppliers reported about supplies to you — and differ in one respect that changes how each should be used.
2A is dynamic. It updates continuously as suppliers file, including for long-closed periods. 2B is static. It is generated once for a period, on a cut-off, and is not revised.
That makes 2B the right basis for a claim, because a claim has to rest on a figure that will still be the same figure when it is questioned. And it makes 2A the right thing for monitoring: what has arrived since you last looked, which supplier is consistently late, what may appear next period.
Neither is filed by you. Both are statements about you, which is a strange position — your credit depends on other people's compliance — and the only real protection is reconciling promptly enough that you can still chase a supplier while the period is recent.
What Billixo does to reduce the work
- AI bill scanning. Photograph the supplier bill and the GSTIN, invoice number, date, lines and tax come back as a draft — no retyping, so no transcription mismatch.
- Supplier records with GSTIN and state, held once and reused, so the same supplier is never entered two slightly different ways.
- Purchase entries that keep the supplier’s own invoice number and date, exactly as printed, which is what the match is made on.
- Correct tax heads on purchases, derived from the supplier’s state rather than chosen.
- Period discipline, so a purchase booked into the wrong month is visible rather than silent.
- Exports in CSV, Excel and JSON, so your reconciliation can happen wherever you or your CA prefer.
A reconciliation method that finishes
- Download GSTR-2B for the period from the GST portal.
- Export your own purchase register for the same period.
- Match on supplier GSTIN + invoice number + invoice date. Do not match on amount — amounts collide, that combination does not.
- Normalise the obvious differences first: leading zeros, slashes, spacing in invoice numbers. A surprising share of "missing" invoices are the same invoice written two ways.
- Split the remainder into the four categories above.
- Fix everything on your side — wrong period, wrong number, unrecorded purchase.
- Chase the suppliers who have genuinely not filed, while you still owe them money.
- Keep the working file. When a notice arrives eighteen months later, it is the only thing that reconstructs what you did and why.
When to do it, and who should
Monthly, close to the filing date, by whoever entered the purchases — not by the CA in a batch at year end.
The person who entered the bill can look at a mismatch and remember the transaction. Someone reconciling nine months later can only see two rows that do not agree, and will make the safest assumption, which is usually to give up the credit.
This is the one compliance job where doing it yourself is genuinely cheaper than delegating it.
The cheapest reconciliation is the one you avoid
Every hour spent reconciling is an hour spent finding transcription errors. The way to spend fewer of them is to stop transcribing.
That is the strongest practical argument for scanning supplier bills rather than typing them: the invoice number and date come off the document itself, which is precisely the field pair the match is made on.
Businesses that scan their purchase bills report the same thing — the reconciliation does not become clever, it becomes short, because the only remaining mismatches are the real ones.
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
What should I match on?
Supplier GSTIN, invoice number and invoice date together. Matching on amount produces false positives constantly, because round numbers repeat.
My supplier has not filed. What can I do?
Nothing in software creates the credit — only their filing does. What you can do is find out early, while their payment is still outstanding, which is the practical argument for reconciling monthly rather than annually.
Does Billixo do the reconciliation for me?
It removes most of the causes rather than automating the comparison: bill scanning captures the supplier’s invoice number and date from the document itself, supplier records prevent the same party being entered two ways, and purchase exports come out in formats your reconciliation tool or CA can read directly.
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.
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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