Profitbooks GST means different things to different businesses. Here is what a billing-led system genuinely covers, where full accounting software starts, and how to tell which one you are shopping for.
What most businesses actually need
In order of how often it hurts: raise a correct invoice quickly; know what is in stock; know who owes money and for how long; enter purchases without an evening lost to typing; hand the accountant something clean on the 5th.
A full chart of accounts appears nowhere on that list for most owner-run businesses, because their CA maintains it anyway from the same source data.
Buying for the list above, rather than for a feature comparison, is how businesses end up with software they still use in a year.
Where billing ends and accounting begins
These are two products and the line between them is worth knowing before buying either, because buying the wrong size is the usual mistake.
Billing is the front of the business: issuing invoices, holding customers and items, stock, knowing what is unpaid, and producing the figures a GST return is built from. Accounting is the whole ledger: a chart of accounts, journal entries, bank reconciliation, depreciation, payroll, and a trial balance that a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement come out of.
Most small businesses need the first continuously and the second periodically. That is why the common and cheapest arrangement is to bill in a billing system and give the accountant clean exports at the end of a quarter or a year — nobody is then making journal entries who should not be.
This product sits on the billing side: GST documents, stock, receivables, and exportable figures. It does not produce a balance sheet, and saying it did would only waste your time and your accountant's.
What Billixo covers
- GST invoicing with the full Rule 46 field set and the tax split derived from place of supply.
- Inventory that decrements as you bill, with low-stock warnings before you run out mid-order.
- Purchases entered from a photograph of the supplier bill — supplier, GSTIN, lines and tax as a draft you check.
- Payments and part payments recorded against invoices.
- Receivables with ageing, so the follow-up list writes itself.
- Recurring invoices for anything billed on the same day each month.
- Proforma invoices and quotations in the same numbering discipline.
- GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B summaries exported for filing or for your CA.
- Bulk import and export — CSV and Excel in; CSV, Excel and JSON out.
- Team logins on the paid plans, each with their own credentials.
What it does not do
- A full general ledger with a chart of accounts and journal entries.
- Payroll.
- Manufacturing costing, bill of materials and work orders.
- Multi-currency consolidation.
- Statutory audit and financial statement preparation.
- If you need these, you need accounting software, and it is better to know that now than after a migration.
Setting up in about twenty minutes
- Open the free account and enter your business name, GSTIN and state.
- Add your products with HSN codes, rates and opening stock.
- Add your regular customers with GSTIN and state.
- Add your regular suppliers.
- Raise one invoice and confirm the stock moved.
- Enter one purchase — photograph the bill if you are on a paid plan or still inside the 14 days of full access.
- Look at the receivables list. That is your working screen from here on.
Inventory that stays accurate
Stock goes wrong for one reason above all others: it is maintained separately from billing. Two records, updated by two people, diverging quietly until somebody counts.
The fix is not better discipline, it is a single source: stock that moves because an invoice was raised, not because someone remembered to adjust it. Purchases increase it, sales reduce it, and the count is a check rather than a reconstruction.
Low-stock warnings then become useful rather than noise, because the number they are based on is real.
Working with your accountant
The handover that works is a file, not an account. GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B summaries, a purchase register that reconciles to 2B, and exports in CSV, Excel or JSON.
That leaves your CA free to work in whatever they use, and leaves you free to change billing software later without a negotiation. Both of those are worth more than an integration that ties you to one practice.
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.
A note for accountants and CAs
If you are the person who has to make sense of a client’s billing at the end of the month, what you need from their software is narrow and specific: a complete outward supply summary, correct place-of-supply treatment, HSN present on every line, and an export you can open without repair.
Billixo produces GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B summaries and exports to CSV, Excel and JSON. Client-side, the invoice fields cannot be skipped, which removes the category of problem where the data was never captured in the first place.
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 I enter purchases as well as sales?
Yes, and on the paid plans you can enter them from a photograph of the supplier bill — supplier, GSTIN, lines and tax come back as a draft you check rather than a form you fill.
Will my CA be able to work with the data?
Yes. GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B summaries plus CSV, Excel and JSON exports of customers, products, invoices and payments. That is what a practitioner actually wants — a clean file, not a login.
Is there a free plan?
Yes — ₹0, no card, no expiry, with volume limits, one login and a watermark on the PDF. Every new account also gets the complete paid feature set for its first 14 days.
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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