Chennai: A need to support new GST return formats, reconcile GST data filed by suppliers with those of buyers’ books, and e-invoicing mandate, has financial software companies busy amending their systems to ready for GST 2.0.
Even as ERP providers were just getting their GST compliance modules in place, the new returns system (set to be implemented by April 2020) will require further investments and tweaks on their part, companies said.
Startups and large financial ERP players TOI spoke to are investing substantially in incorporating key changes in the new system such as reconciliation of supplier and buyer books for better input credit management, auto-populating details such as purchases from unregistered dealers, bill of entry-wise import details, and capturing HSN codes at invoice levels.
ClearTax founder and CEO Archit Gupta said they invested close to $10 million in supporting users to comply with GST 1.0 back in 2017, and they envisage “more spends” in aligning with GST 2.0.
“We started investing ahead of the curve and have already been working on supporting smoother input tax credit management in the past one year,” Gupta said. Shubham Agarwal, co-founder and CTO, Vyapar, a mobile-based financial management tool for small businesses, said they will create a separate team of around seven to eight GST and tech experts and it will need almost a month of focused development efforts and costs to help customers make the transition. Over 70% of Vyapar’s clients fall under the GST ambit. Currently, a buyer does not need to reconcile purchases with supplier invoices for GST purposes on a regular basis, but this becomes imperative under the new system for both suppliers and purchasers, Abhishek Jain, Tax Partner, EY said. “The supply chain of business teams will fundamentally change this way,” he said.
Financial software pioneer Tally says the two big changes they are making are to help customers do this reconciliation, and facilitate reporting in the new format. The first is the bigger and more complex change, and we are investing in our own capabilities and dedicating time and money for this, Tejas Goenka, MD, Tally Solutions, said.
Prashant Ganti, head of product - global tax, accounting and payroll, Zoho, said the changes, though not a complete overhaul, count as small feature developments for Zoho, “Our software already provides the new format returns in a transition phase and we are also working to support e-invoicing requirement mandated for companies on voluntary basis,” he said. Global software firm Avalara Technologies says the company is tweaking its systems to support the government’s e-invoicing requirements, with their Indian GST product team keeping systems updated with government API releases.
Published On : 22-10-2019
Source : Times of India
