Top 10 IRISGST upgrades of 2019 that helped you ease your compliance

It is the month of December, the month where we shall not only part ways with the year 2019 but also the entire 2010-decade.

Talking in terms of GST, the year 2019 has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride. From GST concessions, changing tax slabs to GST collection, we have all seen our share of ups and downs.

Despite the ever-changing GST system, we at IRISGST have always strived to keep you up to the speed, ensuring your compliance does not suffer. Our product development is agile and we have upgraded the products all the year round as per the changing GST systems.

Not only this, the products have come a far way through the year, all thanks to the constant feedback of our esteemed clients. And what better day than today to abreast you with all that you can do with your IRISGST subscription.

So, here’s a list of top updates implemented in IRIS GST compliance solutions round the year:

IRIS Sapphire – The GST Software

IRIS Sapphire, the GST software from IRISGST, is a one-stop solution for all your GST Compliance. Built with features like auto-computation, smart and advanced reconciliation and robust insights and reports, IRIS Sapphire offers the CFO office maximised ITC and timely GST compliance in an easy and hassle-free way.

Major Features introduced through the year in IRIS Sapphire:

1. Getting control over your Monthly ITC computation

The introduction of the 20% ITC rule in the month of November 2019 (now made as 10% in the 38^th GST council meeting held in Dec) had left the taxpayer’s community in utter chaos. According to the rule, if a taxpayer’s ITC data does not match his vendor’s GSTR 1 data (or his own GSTR 2A), his ITC claim shall be capped at 20%.

While the ITC claim reported in GSTR 3B still continues to be computed and declared by the taxpayer, introduction of this rule implies a necessary reconciliation of purchase invoices which will ensure ITC is claimed within the limits. Before this rule, the reconciliation and follow up with vendors for erroneous reporting was done periodic and not closely tied to the monthly GSTR 3B filing process.

In a prompt move to equip the taxpayers, new features were introduced in IRISGST under the umbrella of GSTR Reconciliation to get a view of monthly reconciliation, ITC eligibility and tracking of provisional ITC. The feature provides the taxpayer with 2 options:

Monthly 2A summary:

The feature provides you with eligible ITC details based on your GSTR 2A data (your vendor’s GSTR 1). Once the calculation request is complete, you can select document type like net debit and credit notes, regular invoices, etc. and document status like the Original, Revised and Original + Revised.

Reconciliation Result View for a month:

This provides you with a detailed reconciliation report between your purchase data and GSTR 2 data on a monthly basis. You can also apply filter such as Supplier POS, Duration, etc. to further help you analyse the eligible ITC.

Track Invoices for ITC

You can now mark invoices to indicate whether ITC claimed is actual or provisional for GSTR 3B filing purpose. This will help to track and take appropriate actions in subsequent months where ITC has been taken provisionally.

Existing features such as advanced Reconciliation, Reports and Email follow up with vendors along with monthly computation of tracking of ITC will give the taxpayer the right tools to get control over their ITC claim. Email follow up can be easily managed by setting up vendor master in Sapphire.

2. Verify your vendor’s and customer’s GSTIN

What started as a simple GSTIN checking utility, has now evolved into a one-stop data repository for all your vendor’s GSTIN data. Initially, IRIS Sapphire users were able to search for the compliance status for a single GSTIN. However, considering the fact that counterparty can have multiple GSTIN, the “Search by PAN” functionality was added to our GST software. With this functionality, the user is provided with a download file, which consists of details related to all the GSTINs associated with the given PAN number.

As of today, the user can simply copy and paste a list of GSTIN and have a detailed GSTR 3B summary and compliance status for the recent filing periods.

3. Insights and Reports

IRIS Sapphire’s “insights and reports” feature provides the user with a bird-eye view of the entire business process on a single screen. These reports are generated from the data collected from the user’s monthly returns. Thereby providing the user with the ability to plan and organise his business process, efficiently.

As of now, IRIS Sapphire hosts over 40+ report, which can be categorised as follows:

Summary – These reports provide you with the overview and these are part of the Dashboard.
Comparative 1-3B – These reports provide you tax level detailed comparison between the two returns.
Sales Analysis – Based on GSTR 1 data, here you can see an analysis of sales.
Purchase Analysis – Based on GSTR 2A, here you can see an analysis of GSTR 2A data like overview and summary details of GSTR 2A, purchases with ineligible ITC, etc.
Monthly Return (3B) – Based on GSTR 3B, here you can see an analysis of ITC classification, ITC cross-utilization, Net ITC available, etc.
Top 10 – Here you will get top 10 details like top 10 counterparties, top 10 vendors, top 10 HSN, etc.
Custom field reports – Based on the generic fields such as plant code, division code etc.

4. Preparing the Annual Return – GSTR 9

As the GST annual return date (in the month of June) drew closer, IRIS Sapphire was augmented with various utilities to help our user file their GSTR 9/9C without any hassle. For easy preparation and verification of GSTN computed data for GSTR, the following was made available for the taxpayers

1. Auto-draft GSTR 9:

The auto-draft feature auto-populates form GSTR 9 from the details filed by the user in his/her form GSTR 1 and GSTR 3B and account ledgers. With the Auto-Draft feature, IRIS Sapphire auto calculates Table 4, Table 5, Partial Table 6 and Table 9.

2. Reports to facilitate GSTR 9 computation

HSN summary reports both for outward and inward supplies is part of GSTR 9 filing. Summarized reports based on monthly data uploaded for GSTR 1 and GSTR 2 reconciliation were made available. Taxpayers who have been uploading line item data in IRISGST along with HSN details, getting the HSN summary table for GSTR 9 is just a matter of click.

5. EWB-GSTR 1 Reconciliation:

As per the government mandate, reconciliation of taxpayer’s EWB data and GSTR 1 data is essential. Thus, EWB-GSTR 1 Recon utility came into existence. With this feature, the user is able to reconcile his GSTR 1 details against the invoice details for which E-way bills (EWB) have been generated.

The reconciliation results provide the user with the following details:

Invoices found for which EWB generated and the same invoice considered for GSTR 1.
EWB’s not generated for some invoices which are uploaded in GSTR 1.
Invoices missing in uploaded GSTR 1 data for which EWB generated.

6. GSTR 3B Auto-Computation

Manual or human intervention is prone to errors. And when it comes to GSTR 3B filings, there is no room for error. Until now, once a taxpayer has submitted his GSTR 3B data, he cannot revise it (even now GSTR 3B reset can be done only once.). Thus, to minimize the possibilities of errors, IRIS Sapphire was upgraded with the auto-calculation feature. Many derived computation like outward taxable supplies, inward supplies liable to reverse charge, non-GST outward supplies etc and import of goods and services and supplies liable to reverse charge etc are auto-computed from uploaded data.

7. GST returns for other taxpayers type

While GSTR 1, 3B and 9 are applicable for regular taxpayers, which comprises the significant percentage of registered business, there are other special types such as TDS and TCS deductors, the provisions for which came in effect in FY 2018-2019. The returns filed by them include GSTR 7 (TDS deductor), GSTR 8 (Ecommerce operator) and GSTR 2X (registered taxpayers who want to claim ITC with respect of TDS and TCS deducted. These specific case returns are also available on IRIS GST Sapphire.

IRIS Topaz –Eway Bill Management System

IRIS Topaz is an EWay Bill Management System to help you manage EWB cycle, right from the generation of EWB to updating the same, rejection and/or cancellation. Topaz is designed to cater to the needs of suppliers, consignors and transporters alike, by enabling a creation of business hierarchy and role/EWB assignment to mimic your sales and dispatch processes.

Major Features introduced through the year in IRIS Topaz are:

8. Email Notification for eway bills needing attention

As per a recent report released by GSTN, 100 crore Eway bills were generated on GSTN portal this year. With such high number of EWay Bills generated by Mega-companies and transporters, keeping a track of EWay validity can be tricky. But, with IRIS Topaz, the onus falls on us. IRIS Topaz keeps you on tab with your upcoming expiries along with the details of the transporter or generator of the bill, through its alert mailer feature.

The user is sent an alert at 8 a.m. daily, which consists of a download link for the following:

E-way Bill expiring today.
E-way Bill extended on the previous day.
E-way Bill expired on the previous day.

9. Set your view preferences

Instead of viewing all the eway bills which could be related to all GSTINs or POBs to which you have access to, you can specify your preferred delivery states and the EWB summary view will display the EWBs related to your preference followed by the other EWB. My preference along with the range of filters available, you can create your own custom view and look at EWBs which are of priority to you.

10. Ease of operation for Consolidated Eway Bills

A consolidated eway bill is generated from other eway bills. While the option to generate consolidated eway bill by simply selecting eway bills existed in Topaz, a separate view section was introduced which can help is easy view and managing subsequent operations of eway bills.

IRIS Peridot- GSTIN Check

IRIS Peridot is a leading app for GSTIN Check available for download on Google Playstore and Appstore. With IRIS Peridot, any individual can scans a GSTIN from any device, banner, etc. The application in return provides you with a detailed report on its GST data and filing status. In case of any non-compliance, user can directly report the same to the CBIC.

The recent notifications of capping ITC claim at 20% of missing invoices in GSTR 2A and blocking of eway bill generation when returns not filed for 2 months, knowing filing pattern of vendors and the parties the taxpayers deals with becomes important. the stricter rules being introduced for ITC claim, need to check vendor compliance

The simplicity and ease of verifying GSTIN is now also available on IRISGST website, in addition to the mobile app and APIs

You can download the app from here or to know more: IRIS Peridot

IRIS Garnet – Data Transformation Engine

IRIS Garnet is a new gem in IRIS GST suite and was introduced to overcome the data extraction and preparation challenges when it comes to GST Returns filing.

While dealing with the data of our clients, we realized that large businesses are spread across multiple locations and have multiple people working on their daily inward and outward supplies recording.

Sometimes there is even a change of resource (due to people leaving jobs), or change in roles leading to reinvention of the data storing (as people prefer their ways of recording data).

And then there are multiple vendors who have their own way of capturing data.

And finally, as invoice generation does not mandate capturing of a particular item like invoice number etc., people tend to ‘not capture’ such details.

While all this is acceptable in usual business, preparing your GST returns becomes difficult as GSTN mandates multiple fields and in a specific format before uploading the data.

Keeping this in mind, this year, IRIS Garnet was developed.

IRIS Garnet helps you transform all your invoice details into a standard format capturing all the details as required by GSTN before uploading to IRIS Sapphire. With a one-time mapping and rules definition between your custom format to IRIS GST format, Garnet can make the GSTR preparation process much faster and efficient.

Further, the flexibility offered to transform data from any ERP, in any format, single or multiple data extracts etc., the existing process or output generated need to have to be changed nor any manual work required subsequently.

You get the data you have and the way your systems do currently, rest is taken care of by Garnet

And that’s not it. Garnet is designed to take care of entire IRIS GST compliance suite. So be it GST Returns, or Eway Bill or even upcoming e-invoicing or new returns, IRIS Garnet can serve all.

What to expect in 2020?

New year 2020, we anticipate, to be quite happening for overall GST compliance and thus for IRIS GST as well. While our IRIS GST suite will be enhanced to accommodate all the upcoming needs such as e-invoicing and simplified new returns, some things to look forward are

The year will start with a launch of our e-invoicing solution, IRIS Onyx. Our e-invoicing solution will cater to all the regulatory needs for e-invoicing as well as cater to customer or industry specific needs. IRIS Onyx, will be the one-stop shop for all e-invoicing requirements and designed in a manner which will not disrupt, instead seamlessly co-exists with existing practices
IRIS Sapphire will be upgraded to support the new GST returns i.e. ANX 1, ANX 2, RET 1 etc. Beta testing for new returns has been started and we expect new system could take a while to go live, some enhancements for reconciliation and ITC claim in 3B are also in pipeline.
IRIS Peridot Plus, a premium version of Peridot with features like creating watchlist, getting notifications of filed /not-filed and Peridot Compliance Score are in the roadmap. While this will be a premium version, in the existing free app additional functionalities such as GSTR 1 filing frequency, EWB blocking status will be introduced. Peridot Premium is definitely one of the most must watch-outs for IRIS GST
IRIS Topaz has been fairly steady application and all changes done by NIC system for eway bill have been addressed. With e-invoicing some process changes can be expected for eway bill and IRIS Topaz will get upgraded accordingly
IRIS Garnet which is primarily a desktop utility will soon have option to push data directly from the utility to IRIS GST portal. Which means for the routine process of uploading data and ensuring its validated can be managed through desktop utility. Making the upload process automatic through Garnet route is also on the roadmap

At IRIS, we believe that a product that does not evolve will not remain a product but service. We are on a pursuit to develop products that simplify lives by use of technology. Our team is on a constant endeavour to ease your GST compliance with minimum disruption to business. And if not much, here’s a round of applause for these guys and heartfelt gratitude for our users who have kept their utmost faith in us.

For the year that’s coming, our effort will be to make the rules and act changes less disruptive and less complex.

In order to share any feedback, suggestion or to simply book a free demo, you can drop us a mail at support@irisgst.com