Three things that used to have nowhere to live in Finocket now have one: what a supply actually is when no tax is charged on it, the compensation cess some goods carry on top of GST, and the transport details a goods consignment needs.
All three follow the same rule. Finocket gives you a place to record your CA's answer. It does not decide the answer for you, and it never fills one in because it looked likely.
Nil rated, exempt and outside GST are three different things
On an invoice they look identical — no tax charged, nothing in the tax column. On a return they are three separate positions, and putting a supply in the wrong one misfiles the return.
In Finocket's words, and deliberately without naming a table or a section:
- Taxable — GST is charged on this supply at a rate.
- Nil rated — GST applies to the supply, but the rate on it is nil.
- Exempt — the supply is exempted from GST by a notification, rather than being nil rated.
- Outside GST — the supply is outside GST altogether, so no GST rate applies to it at all.
There is a fifth state, and it is the one every item starts in: Not stated. It does not mean “taxable”. It means nobody has been asked yet, and Finocket will not treat an unanswered question as an answer — least of all as the answer you might be trying to say it is not. Nothing nags you about it, either: a business that has never been asked this has not got it wrong.
Which one your goods or services fall into is your CA's call. Finocket has no opinion, and it will not offer one, because that is a statement about the law and it can only make those from an approved rule.
Where you set it, and what wins
There is a GST classification picker on an item, which becomes the starting point for every line you sell it on, and the same picker (What this supply is) on each invoice line. The line is what counts — one invoice can carry a taxable line and an exempt line, and it should be able to.
Where a line disagrees with the catalogue item behind it, Finocket points that out rather than silently preferring one. And if a line is classified as untaxed while still carrying tax, the save is refused and the form tells you why before you get there, instead of the invoice going out contradicting itself.
Compensation cess
Some goods — tobacco, aerated drinks, coal, motor vehicles — carry a compensation cess on top of GST. Most do not. There is now a Cess % box on an item and on an invoice line, sitting beside the tax rates it is charged alongside.
Left blank, it means nobody has said, which is not the same as zero — so Finocket does not fill in a zero and treat the question as settled. If you are not sure whether something you sell bears cess, that is a question for your CA, and the blank box is the honest state until you have asked.
Cess lives on the line, not on the invoice, for the same reason the classification does: one invoice can easily carry a cess-bearing item and an ordinary one.
E-way transport details, and the Part-B trap
When you raise an e-way bill from an invoice, Finocket now asks for the whole transport leg rather than a couple of fields: the mode of transport (road, rail, air or ship), the vehicle number, the transport document number and its date, the transporter's ID and name, and the cargo type.
The one worth understanding is the vehicle number. An e-way bill has two parts: Part-A, the consignment details, and Part-B, the vehicle actually carrying it. Fill in Part-A alone and you get a document that looks like an e-way bill — and goods moving on a Part-A-only bill are treated, in law, as moving without an e-way bill at all. That is the shape of the mistake this dialog exists to stop.
So the dialog checks what the portal will refuse before you submit anything, and tells you which field is missing and why. Road transport needs a vehicle number; the other modes need a transport document instead. The mode defaults to road, which is what was always being assumed — now it is stated on the screen rather than assumed behind it.
If you register your invoices with the portal first, these details go up with the registration in one step. See E-invoicing (IRN) and e-way bills for the rest of that flow.
Exports carry a customs port
An export invoice can now record the customs port it leaves through, chosen from the notified list rather than typed — the same picker a bill of entry uses on the way in. See The government lists Finocket fills in for you.
What none of this does yet
Recording a classification is not the same as filing on it. Finocket stores what you and your CA decided, and shows it on the document; how each class is reported on a return still follows your CA's reading, and Finocket does not file anything for you. The value of doing it now is that the answer is captured on the day the invoice is raised, instead of being reconstructed from memory at year-end.
Related: E-invoicing (IRN) and e-way bills, The government lists Finocket fills in for you, Where a tax figure comes from.