This page covers what billing in this trade actually involves, what to check in anything sold as hospital billing software, and a free plan you can test the whole thing on without a card.
What is the same in every trade
Whatever you sell, if you are registered and making a taxable supply the document is a tax invoice and the field set does not change: your name, address and GSTIN; a consecutive number unique within the financial year; the date; the customer and their GSTIN where registered; place of supply on inter-state supplies; HSN or SAC against every line; the taxable value per line; and CGST, SGST/UTGST, IGST and cess shown separately rather than as one combined tax figure.
The numbering rule is the one that causes the most trouble in practice, because it cannot be enforced by a person. One consecutive series per year, no reused numbers, and a cancelled invoice keeps its number rather than giving it back.
Rates, thresholds and the scope of e-invoicing have all moved and will move again. Nothing here states a current figure for that reason — check the notification in force for your own turnover.
Hospital and clinic billing
Healthcare billing divides in two, and the division is a tax division rather than a departmental one. Health care services provided by a clinical establishment are largely exempt; the medicines, consumables and devices supplied across a counter are a taxable supply of goods.
So a hospital bill commonly contains both, and they must not be merged. The exempt professional, procedure and room charges and the taxable pharmacy and consumable lines need separate blocks with their own totals — which in practice usually means a bill of supply for the exempt part and a tax invoice for the goods, and two consecutive number series to keep straight.
An in-patient bill is a folio built over an admission: room category per day, procedures, investigations, consumables issued, professional fees, and whatever an insurer or a scheme is covering shown as a settlement against the total rather than as a discount on the taxable value.
Plainly: this is billing and GST reporting, and it is not a hospital information system. It does not hold clinical records, manage appointments or process insurance claims. For a small clinic billing consultations and dispensing a little, it fits; for a multi-speciality hospital it is one piece of a bigger stack.
What you get on the free plan
- Complete GST tax invoices with every legally required field, not a template with a tax box.
- Customers and items stored once, with GSTIN, state, HSN or SAC and rate held against them.
- Tax derived rather than typed — per line, from the item rate and the place of supply.
- One numbering series, issued centrally and consecutive within the financial year.
- Stock that moves as you bill, so a closing figure means something.
- An answer to "who owes me what", aged, without adding anything up.
- PDF invoices to print, email or send on WhatsApp.
- Full export — CSV, Excel and JSON, on every plan including the free one.
- ₹0, no card, no expiry.
Judging any billing system in half an hour
- Load ten of your own items, including two at different tax rates, rather than using the demo data.
- Raise a bill with both rates on it and check the tax is computed per line, not once on the total.
- Print it on your own printer, on the paper or roll you actually use.
- Raise a second bill and confirm the number advanced by itself.
- Cancel one and check the number was not handed back for reuse.
- Add a customer with a GSTIN and confirm an inter-state supply switches to IGST without being asked.
- Export everything you just entered, and open the file. If you cannot, stop there.
The second person, and what changes
Almost every billing system that fails does so at the point a second person starts billing, and the failure is always the same shape. Two people, two copies, two numbering series, and a month that cannot be reconciled.
What a shared system changes is not convenience but authority. There is one record, one series of numbers issued centrally, and an audit of who raised what. None of that is possible when the record is a file that can be copied.
It changes what you can delegate, too. Billing can be handed to staff while the reports stay yours, because seeing a day's total and editing a day's invoices are different permissions. With a shared file they are the same permission.
If you are a single operator today, this is the thing to plan for rather than the thing to buy for. Moving a year of history is the expensive part, and it gets more expensive each month.
What a billing system cannot do for a trade
Worth saying plainly, because a page like this is usually written the other way round. Billing software issues documents, keeps records and reports. It does not run the trade-specific machinery around them.
It will not integrate with your weighing scale, your fuel dispensers, your kitchen display or your network provisioning. It does not hold clinical records or manage appointments. It does not do production planning, project costing or time capture. Where any of those is the actual problem, a billing system is not the answer to it and will not become one.
What it does do is the part every trade shares: a correct document, a numbering series that holds, tax computed rather than typed, a record of who owes what, and figures that a return can be built from. That is a narrow job done properly.
The sensible way to choose is to write down the three things that would make the software useless to you, then test those three first. Features are easy to compare and mostly not the deciding factor.
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.
What a GST invoice legally has to carry
Rule 46 of the CGST Rules sets out what a tax invoice must show, and it is a longer list than most invoice templates carry. Getting one field wrong does not usually cost you anything the day you raise it — it costs your customer their input credit months later, which is a harder conversation.
The fields are:
- Your name, address and GSTIN
- A consecutive invoice number, unique within the financial year
- The date of issue
- The customer's name, address and GSTIN where they are registered
- Place of supply, and the state code, for inter-state supplies
- HSN or SAC against every line
- Description, quantity, unit, rate and taxable value per line
- Rate and amount of CGST, SGST/UTGST, IGST and cess, shown separately
- Whether tax is payable on reverse charge
- Signature or digital signature of the supplier or an authorised person
Billixo fills these in from the customer and product records rather than asking you to remember them, which is the only reliable way a busy counter gets them all right every time.
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.
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.
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
Can more than one person bill at the same time?
On the paid plans, yes, with separate logins and one shared numbering series so two tills cannot produce the same invoice number. The free plan is a single login.
Does it track stock?
Yes — billing reduces stock as it sells, and purchases increase it, so a closing figure is derived from the records rather than counted. Batch and expiry tracking matters in some trades and is worth testing against your own stock before you rely on it.
Can I get my data out if I leave?
Yes, on every plan including the free one — CSV, Excel and JSON, in full, whenever you want. Data you cannot export is not data you own, so it is not something we put behind a payment.
Is my data shared with anyone?
No. It sits in this installation, scoped to your company. AI requests only happen when you explicitly ask for one, and nothing is sent anywhere otherwise.
Is it really free?
Yes. The Free plan is ₹0, needs no card and has no expiry. It has volume limits and leaves out the paid conveniences — watermark-free PDFs, GST return exports, the AI features, extra logins — but the invoices it produces are real GST invoices, and you can export your data from it whenever you like.
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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