Finocket puts two very different kinds of number in front of you, and it treats them differently on purpose.
The first kind is arithmetic on your own books — what a client owes you, what you spent last month, what your stock is worth. Finocket works those out from what you entered, and if they are wrong it is because the entry was.
The second kind is a statement about tax law — the rate on a code, the turnover at which an obligation starts, the day a return is due. Finocket did not work those out. Somebody in Delhi published them in a notification, and the only honest thing an app can do is quote that document and show you where it got it.
“Why this number?”
Wherever Finocket shows a figure of the second kind, there is a small dotted link beside it reading Why this number?. Tap it and you get, in this order:
- The sentence itself, copied word for word out of the government document — not paraphrased, not summarised.
- The notification it came from, and the date it came into force.
- The date it stopped applying, if it has, or a note that it is still in force.
- A link to the document, its publisher, and when we last confirmed the link.
That is the whole promise of the thing, and it is deliberately checkable by you rather than by us. If a figure cannot open that panel with a government sentence inside it, the figure is not sourced — and the panel says so in those words instead of showing you an empty box.
Why it sometimes says it does not know
This is the part worth reading before you meet it, because it will look like a fault and it is not one.
Open a rule question today and you will usually be told “No approved rule says this”, or, on an item, that no approved rate is published for that code and Finocket will not guess one.
Nothing is broken. Finocket keeps a rule book, and the rule book starts empty. A rule only goes into it after a chartered accountant has read the government sentence and confirmed it says what the row claims. Until that happens for a given question, the answer to that question is genuinely unknown to Finocket, and it tells you so.
The alternative was considered and rejected. An app can always fill a box with the figure that is probably right — the one most businesses use, the one that was true when the app was written. It would look identical to a sourced answer. You would have no way to tell the two apart, and no reason to check the one that needed checking. A number nobody can trace, sitting confidently on an invoice, is how a filing goes wrong quietly for a year.
So Finocket would rather be visibly unhelpful once than invisibly wrong for twelve months. Ask your CA, enter their answer, and carry on. Nothing is blocked while the rule book is empty: every field you would have filled is still yours to fill, and Finocket keeps what you type without arguing with it.
“We do not know” and “we could not look” are different sentences
These two feel the same and are not, so Finocket never lets them share wording.
- No approved rule says this — the rule book was read successfully, and it holds nothing that answers your question. That is a fact about the rule book.
- Finocket could not read its rule book — the lookup itself failed. There may well be an approved rule; we simply could not reach it just now. Try again in a moment, and tell support if it keeps happening.
The reason for the fuss: a blank screen reads as reassuring, and most people will supply the comforting explanation for both. One of the two means “nothing applies to you”. The other means “we have no idea whether something applies to you”. Acting on the first when it was really the second is exactly the mistake this whole design exists to prevent.
The other things it can tell you
There are a few more answers, and each one is its own situation:
- Two approved rules disagree. Finocket will not pick one for you — choosing between two readings of the law is a person's job, and it has been flagged for one.
- It depends on a state classification nobody has stated. Some rules read differently for special-category states. Answering the general rule anyway would hand a confident, wrong number to every business in a north-eastern or hill state, so Finocket answers neither.
- This is Finocket's own default, not an approved rule. A figure built into the app because the rule book could not answer. It carries no quoted sentence and no effective date, which means it cannot tell you what applied last October. Check it with your CA before you rely on it.
- From a government code list. Codes, units, ports and branch lists are published as lists, not as notifications, so they have no notification number and no effective date — and none is shown, because printing one would invent a validity window the list does not have.
What “approved” actually means
It is a narrower act than it sounds, and the narrowness is the point. The reviewer is not asked whether a rate is fair or whether it suits your business. They are asked one question: does the sentence quoted from the government document actually say what this row claims?
Three things follow from that, and all three are worth knowing as a reader:
- The approval is tied to the exact text. Change a word of the quoted sentence afterwards and the approval no longer covers it — it has to go back to a person.
- A published rule is never edited. When the law moves, a new version is added and the old one is closed off on the day it stopped applying. So an invoice you raised last year can still show you the rule that was in force when you raised it, rather than today's rule pretending to have always been there.
- Nothing publishes itself. No amount of automatic reading of government websites can put a figure in front of you. A named person signs it off, and their name and the date stay attached to it.
Where you will meet all this
- Settings → Business details — the What applies to you strip, under your aggregate turnover. Five questions people ask their accountant every year — e-invoicing, how many HSN digits to quote, quarterly filing under QRMP, the annual return, and the reconciliation statement — each answered off the rule book, each with its own Why this number?
- The HSN/SAC picker on an item and on an invoice line, where a suggested rate is offered with its source and never applied behind your back.
- The unit note on an item and on an invoice line, which tells you the code your line will be filed under.
- GST → Newsroom, where a change to the law arrives with the document it came out of.
What this is not
It is not tax advice, and it does not file anything. Finocket quotes documents and shows its working. Deciding what applies to your business, and signing the return, stays with you and your CA — which is why the panel always ends up pointing at the document rather than at an opinion.
Related: The Compliance Newsroom, The government lists Finocket fills in for you, Reports & GST filings.