GST

The general thresholds for compulsory registration are:

• Goods: ₹40 lakh annual turnover (₹20 lakh in special-category states).
• Services: ₹20 lakh annual turnover (₹10 lakh in special-category states).
• Selling through an e-commerce platform, or supplying inter-state: registration can be required regardless of turnover.

Below the threshold, registration is optional — some shops register anyway because their B2B buyers want tax invoices. These limits move, and the turnover rules have exceptions, so treat the figures above as a starting point and spend one conversation with a CA before deciding. This article is a guide, not tax advice.

Out of the box, Lekhita makes plain retail bills with no tax fields to fill and nothing to configure. If you are under the threshold, that is all you need — do not add tax complexity you are not required to carry. An unregistered shop should never see a “GST (0%)” line on its bill, and in Lekhita it does not: with no GSTIN saved, the document is titled as a plain bill and the tax chrome disappears entirely.

You never choose a document type. Lekhita reads what you have actually saved and titles the bill accordingly:

• No GSTIN saved → a plain bill. No statutory title, no tax section. This is the default and it is correct for an unregistered shop.
• GSTIN saved, regular scheme, tax on the bill → Tax Invoice, with the full field set below.
• GSTIN saved, but this sale carries no tax (exempt or nil-rated) → Bill of Supply.
• GSTIN saved and your tax type set to composition → Bill of Supply carrying the prescribed composition declaration. A composition dealer may not collect tax, and Lekhita will not print a tax line for one.

Once your GSTIN is saved and tax is on, the invoice screen renders a proper tax document, not a summary card:

• The document title — “Tax Invoice” or “Bill of Supply” — decided from your data, never guessed.
• Your shop's name, address, phone and GSTIN. Your buyer's name, phone, address and GSTIN when you have recorded one against the customer.
• Place of supply, and the intra-state / inter-state decision that follows from it: Lekhita compares the first two digits of your GSTIN against your buyer's and prints CGST + SGST or IGST accordingly.
• Per line: HSN or SAC code, quantity, unit rate, taxable value, and the tax rate read back from what was actually charged.
• An HSN-wise tax summary — taxable value, CGST, SGST and IGST grouped by HSN and rate — which is the shape a GSTR-1 summary needs.
• The total in paise-exact arithmetic that always reconciles with the lines above it, the amount in words in Indian numbering, and a signature block.
• The bill date, and whether the bill is paid, pending or on credit.

Two things worth knowing about how those numbers are produced. The tax split is derived from the tax actually recorded on each line, so a line with no tax prints no rate — Lekhita never invents a percentage. And when the tax could only be reconciled at the bill level rather than per line, the document prints one honest combined GST row instead of fabricating a CGST/SGST pair.

Being exact rather than vague, because this is where a soft phrase costs you real money in an assessment:

• The invoice number is not a compliant serial. Rule 46 wants a consecutive number, unique within the financial year, of at most 16 characters. Lekhita's is built from a timestamp: it is unique and it never repeats, but it is not consecutive, it is 17 characters, and it does not restart on 1 April. This is the one hard failure on the list and it is being worked on.
• HSN prints only if you put it there. HSN lives on the item, not on the sale. If an item has no HSN saved, that line prints without one — and Lekhita does not check that what you typed is a valid 4- or 6-digit code for your turnover band. Fill HSN on your items before you rely on the HSN-wise summary.
• Your GSTIN is never verified. There is no checksum and no format check — a typo is stored and printed exactly as entered. Worse, the number can be saved in two places (business settings and tax settings), so check the one that actually prints on your bill against your registration certificate.
• Reverse charge always prints “No”, there is no unit of measure (UQC) per line, and there is no e-invoicing — no IRN, no signed QR. If you are above the e-invoice turnover limit, Lekhita cannot generate the invoice you are required to issue.

Everything on that list is a real gap, not a technicality we are softening. We are not putting a date on this page until we can hit it, and the day any line above moves, this article gets edited the same day.

Yes, comfortably — if you are unregistered; or registered and billing walk-in consumers who are not claiming input credit; or registered and billing business buyers who need the tax detail on paper and are not going to fail you over the invoice series.

Not yet — if you are above the e-invoicing turnover limit and must issue IRN-signed invoices; if your buyers or your auditor will reject a non-consecutive invoice number; or if you supply on reverse charge. In those cases keep issuing invoices from whatever you use today and run Lekhita alongside for the counter, the khata and the bookings. We would rather have you on half the product honestly than all of it and wrong.

1. Open More → business settings and enter your 15-character GSTIN. This is the number the invoice prefers, so this is the one to get right.
2. Open More → tax settings, set the tax type to GST and turn tax on with your default rate. If you are registered under the composition scheme, set the type to composition here — that is what makes Lekhita print a Bill of Supply with the declaration instead of a tax invoice.
3. Set tax-inclusive on or off to match how you price. If your shelf prices already include tax, turn it on and Lekhita shows the GST as included rather than adding it on top.
4. Add HSN or SAC codes to your items — open an item and fill the HSN field. Nothing else on this page works properly without this step, and it is the step most people skip.
5. Ring up one test sale and open its invoice. Check the title, your GSTIN, the HSN column and the tax split before you bill a real customer.

If a branch has its own registration, note that tax settings are saved against the branch you are working in, while business settings are business-wide — and the invoice prefers the business-wide number. If your branches are separately registered, tell us on WhatsApp before you start billing; this is the part of the setup we would rather walk through with you than have you discover at filing time.

Being precise, because this is where a vague promise costs you at month end. Lekhita exports two CSV files, from two screens — Orders and Customers. There is no export from Reports.

• The orders CSV has one row per bill: bill number, date, customer name and phone, total amount, currency, payment mode, and status (paid / pending / overdue / draft). It exports what you are looking at, so filter first.
• It does not have a tax column, item lines, HSN codes or a rate-wise breakup. Your CA can reconcile your turnover and your payment mix from it. They cannot prepare a rate-wise GSTR-1 from it — for that they need the per-invoice detail, which today means opening the invoices.
• The customers CSV is name, phone and email. Your items do not export at all yet.
• There is no GST liability report and no HSN-wise summary in the reports section. The HSN-wise summary exists on each invoice document, not across a month.
• Reports cover today, this week and this month. There is no April-to-March financial-year view yet — so nothing in the app is bucketed to your actual financial year.

Lekhita records and reports — it does not file returns, and it does not compute your liability. Your CA (or you, on the GST portal) files GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B. See Tally & data export for exactly what comes out and how.

Small businesses under a turnover cap can opt for the composition scheme — a small flat tax and simpler filing, but no tax collected on bills and no input credit. A composition dealer must issue a Bill of Supply carrying a specific declaration, and Lekhita does produce that document once you set your tax type to composition. Whether the scheme suits you at all is exactly the kind of question the one CA conversation above is for.