Almost every billing product in India says "GST compliant". The phrase means very little on its own — four specific questions separate software that keeps you compliant from software that prints a tax invoice.
This is the question almost no shortlist includes and the one with statutory teeth. Under Rule 3(1) of the Companies (Accounts) Rules 2014, from 1 April 2023 companies maintaining books in software must use accounting software with an audit trail that records every change and cannot be disabled.
"We have an audit log" is not an answer. The questions that separate implementations: can any user or administrator turn it off? Can a log entry be edited or deleted after the fact? And can you demonstrate to an auditor that entries have not been tampered with?
The strongest implementations make tampering detectable rather than merely discouraged — appending each entry with a hash of the one before it, so removing or altering a row breaks the chain visibly. Ask whether there is a way to verify the chain, and what it produces. If the answer is a screen that lists changes, that is a log, not a control.
E-invoicing is widely misunderstood as a fancier invoice layout. It is not. Above the notified turnover threshold, a B2B invoice must be reported to an Invoice Registration Portal, which returns an Invoice Reference Number and a signed QR code. An invoice without a valid IRN is not a valid tax invoice, whatever it looks like.
So the question is not "do you support e-invoicing" but "do you submit to the IRP and store the IRN against the invoice". Follow up with: what happens when the portal is down, can an invoice be cancelled within the permitted window, and is the QR code printed from the returned signed payload rather than generated locally?
Check the current threshold against your own turnover rather than assuming. It has been lowered several times since introduction, and businesses have discovered they were in scope after the fact.
This is where GST billing software either earns its price several times over or quietly costs you money every month.
GSTR-2B is the auto-drafted statement of input tax credit available to you, built from what your suppliers filed. Your own purchase records are a separate list. Where the two disagree — a supplier who did not file, an invoice entered with a different number, a wrong GSTIN — credit sits unclaimed. Unclaimed ITC past the deadline is not deferred; it is gone.
Manual reconciliation of a few hundred invoices a month is tedious enough that it gets skipped, which is precisely why software should do it. Ask to see a reconciliation run: it should import the 2B, match against recorded purchases, and produce a list of mismatches you can act on — supplier by supplier, with the amount at stake.
This is the most overstated claim in the category, and the distinction is worth insisting on.
Most software prepares returns: it builds GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B from your transactions, so the figures are computed rather than typed. Submission still happens on the GST portal, and the acknowledgement number is recorded afterwards. That is genuinely useful and it is not the same as filing.
Some products integrate with a GST Suvidha Provider and can submit directly. That is a different capability with a different cost. Ask, in these words: does your software submit the return to the GSTN, or does it prepare the return for me to submit? An answer that stays vague is an answer.
To be clear about Rebota: it prepares GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, imports and reconciles GSTR-2B, tracks the ITC ledger, and records the ARN against a return once you have filed. It does not submit to the GSTN.
Beyond the four questions, a few details separate software you keep from software you replace in a year.
E-way bills need net weight, gross weight and volume. If those live on the item master, generation is a click; if they are typed at dispatch, they will be wrong. Credit and debit notes must link to the original invoice and flow into the return correctly — a note raised as a standalone document is a reconciliation problem later. TDS and TCS need to be deducted where the payment happens, not calculated separately at month end. And HSN and rate management should be maintained on the item, not retyped per invoice, so a rate change is one edit.
If you are moving from existing books, the migration is decided by your masters rather than your transactions. Vouchers import mechanically; ledger groups are what stall an import, because nothing can safely decide which side of the balance sheet an unrecognised group belongs to.
Ask whether the import runs in two stages — a preview showing exactly what will post and what cannot be mapped, then a commit applying precisely that — and what it does with a ledger it cannot map. A system that maps everything automatically is guessing, and books that balance while being wrong are worse than an import that refused.
| Feature | Basic billing app | Accounting software | Rebota |
|---|---|---|---|
| GST-compliant tax invoice | |||
| E-invoicing — IRP submission, IRN stored | Varies | ||
| E-way bills with weight and volume on the item | Varies | ||
| GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B prepared from transactions | |||
| GSTR-2B import and reconciliation | Varies | ||
| Input tax credit ledger | Varies | ||
| Submits the return to the GSTN | Some, via GSP | Prepares; you file and record the ARN | |
| TDS / TCS at the point of payment | |||
| Rule 3(1) audit trail that cannot be disabled | Rarely | Hash-chained and verifiable | |
| Imports existing Tally data | Varies | XML, preview then commit |
Indian businesses that need billing, GST returns and the statutory audit trail in the same system as their operations — inventory, projects or production — rather than reconciled across two systems each month.
A business that needs only invoices and a GST return, with no stock, projects or production behind them. Dedicated billing software or your existing accounting package will do that more cheaply, and there is no benefit in carrying an ERP for it.
If you need submission directly to the GSTN rather than preparation, a product with a GSP integration does something Rebota does not. If your accountant works exclusively in Tally and your books are otherwise fine, the switching cost may exceed the gain.
It is not, above the smallest scale. Once e-invoicing applies to you, invoices must carry an IRN from the portal, and a spreadsheet cannot obtain one.
The cost that surprises people is reconciliation time, not licence fees. Unmatched GSTR-2B lines have to be chased with suppliers, and software that surfaces them creates work it did not previously appear you had — work that was always there, silently costing you credit.
Ask four questions: can the audit trail be disabled, does it submit to the IRP and store the IRN, does it reconcile GSTR-2B, and does "filing" mean preparing or submitting. Products that answer all four crisply are a short list, and the answers matter more than the invoice template.
Businesses that stay comfortably compliant do one thing structurally: they reconcile GSTR-2B monthly rather than at the year-end deadline, and they treat every mismatch as a supplier conversation rather than an accounting entry. The credit at stake is usually far larger than the effort, and the conversations get easier the earlier they happen — a supplier who has not filed is a fixable problem in month one and an unrecoverable loss in month eleven.
