E-way bill generation – 10 times faster and easy integration with ERP’s in 1 click

e-Way Bills – A strictly mandated document for goods Transportation. As given in Rule 138 of CGST Rules, 2017, e-Way Bills are mandatory documents to be carried while moving Goods having value Rs. 50,000 or more. e-Way Bills are mandatory for inter-state, intra-state, SEZ and import-export movements.

E Way Bill generation must be done on the e-Way Bill Portal or site-to-site integration using APIs before the movement of goods begins. The e-Way Bill is divided into two parts, Part-A and Part-B, both are to be furnished mandatorily.

Part-A of the e-Way Bill has all the details related to the transaction and the goods such as GSTIN of the receiver, HSN, Goods Value, Item details, Invoice/Challan number and place of delivery.

Part-B of the Electronic-Way Bill contains the transporter details such as Transporter ID and Vehicle number. An e-Way Bill is considered invalid or incomplete if any one of these two parts is missing.

e-Way Bill Generation- Who, When and How

The e-Way Bill can be generated by any person registered on the GST Portal or enrolled on the e-Way Bill Portal as a transporter. This means that all three, the Consigner, the Consignee and the transporter can generate an e-Way Bill, on behalf of the other.

Mainly the owner of the Goods or the Supplier generates the e-Way Bill before the movement of the shipment starts. But in case the Supplier is an unregistered person, then the Receiver of the Goods must generate the e-Way Bill on his behalf.

In yet another case, where both the Supplier and the Receiver fail to generate the e-Way Bill, the responsibility moves on the Transporter.

Ideally, the e-Way Bill must be generated before the movement of the Goods begins. e-Way Bill must be mandatorily generated for all the movements of Goods worth Rs. 50,000 and above.

The Government has not allowed any compensation from the e-Way Bill to any type of movement. The e-Way Bill rule equally applies to Inter-state, Intra-state, SEZ and Import/Export movements of goods.

A user can generate the e-Way Bill from either the official e-Way Bill Portal or through APIs and site-to-site integration.

Following are the steps to generate e-Way Bills from the e-Way Bill Portal-

• Log into the e-Way Bill Portal using your User Id and Password
• Under e-Way Bill, click on ‘Generate New’
• Fill in all the mandatory fields with correct details
• Furnish the Item Details- HSN, Product Name, Description, etc.
• Fill in the Transporter details- Mode, Transporter Name, ID, Transporter Document No. and Vehicle Number.
• Verify if you have entered all the details correctly, then click on ‘Submit’
• If there are no errors the e-Way Bill shall be generated and can be downloaded as a JSON or PDF File.
• The e-Way Bill can also be printed from the Portal.

e Way Bill Non-Compliance : Critical Consequences for Businesses

Complying with the e-Way Bill system is highly important for Businesses. Since e-Way Bills are mandatory documents, the Government has made strict arrangements to ensure that Businesses comply with the same sincerely.

Vehicles are intercepted at any point in their journey. If a Vehicle is found eligible and yet not carrying an e-Way Bill, then a penalty of Rs. 10,000 is levied on the Owner of the goods. If not the Penalty then the Owner must pay the amount of tax sought to be evaded.

In suspicious cases, for say, if the owner does not show up for their goods, then the goods can also be detained, seized and even confiscated in extreme cases.

This is a strict and harsh Rule for Businesses. The non-compliance can lead the Businesses towards monetary losses in the form of Penalties and Non-monetary losses in the form of loss of goods.

apart from actual losses, the non-compliance with the e-Way Bill system can also bring the businesses to a momentary halt, since no smooth transaction of Goods in possible without an e-Way Bill.

Ultimately such Taxpayers and Businesses that tamper with the rule too often are noticed by the Tax Officials and can attract Audits and Scrutinies.

Hence it becomes important for Businesses to Comply Better with the e-Way Bill rule, for the smooth and frictionless running of Businesses.

The Possible Reasons why Accountants might find e-Way Bills difficult to handle

Managing the e-Way Bills especially its generation process can be an ache for accountants and anyone who deals with them. Generation process alone is highly time-consuming and lengthy.

The most common problems faced by Accountants while dealing with e-Way Bills are listed below-

• JSON Files-To create an e-Way Bill, a user has to convert their Invoices manually into JSON format and upload that File in the e-Way Bill portal. This consumes time.
• Bulk Generation-Even to Bulk generate the e-Way Bills the user has to feed the Invoice related and other information in a JSON File in the e-Way Bill Portal, which is tedious and takes longer.
• Manual Data Entry-The user can also opt for manually feeding the data to the e-Way Bill portal instead of using the JSON File. This is again time-taking.
• Manual data entry errors-Because the process is manual it is no surprise that data entry errors may arise.
• Multiple visits to the e-Way Bill Portal-The user is caught in the constant to and fro between the Portal and the ERP with the data or JSON Files.
• Maintenance for further use-Since the idea of Matching the e-Way Bill and GSTR-1 data has been introduced it has become an important task for the Accountants to maintain the e-Way Bills manually for further uses.
• e-Way Bill Numbers-Since the user has to manually enter the e-Way Bill numbers against Invoices with specified Invoice Numbers, there is a high risk of confusion and errors as the e-Way Bills are also canceled and generated fresh.
• Expiry of e-Way Bills-e-Way Bills tend to get expired after a period, the user must then extend it’s validity, within 4 hours of expiration. This can be a problem for the user as expired e-Way Bills shall be considered invalid.
• Errors in e-Way Bills-If there are any errors in the e-Way Bills, it cannot be changed or rectified, the only option left is to cancel that e-Way Bill and create a New e-Way Bill.

Here’s an Advanced and Potential solution for all your e-Way Bill complication

Managing and Generating e-Way Bills can be a critical task for accountants and businesses. Mistakes can lead to penalties and loss of goods, also, if the user wishes for everything to be accurate, then they must invest an ample amount of time and bandwidth.

The essence here is to save both, if a task can be done in less time with a lower bandwidth it is a bonus for the Business. APIs and GSPS can help Businesses in various ways as APIs enable site-to-site integrations

One such API provider is GSTHero. GSTHero is a Government Authorized GST Suvidha Provider, that provides high-end solutions to GST Related complexities.

GSTHero’s e-Way Bill Solutions include- ERP Plug-ins and Integration.

It links the user’s ERP to the e-Way Bill Portal, so the user can skip most of the steps of the tedious process and can perform the e-Way Bill operations from within the ERPs.