Set up GST for an Indian business

For a business registered for GST in India, Spine needs to know your GSTIN and state, and each customer’s GST details. With those, it picks CGST + SGST for a sale in your state and IGST for one outside it, and prints a GST-compliant invoice.

Who can do this

Owners set up the GST registration and the default tax preference. The GST settings appear only when your tax country is India (see Start from your country’s tax rates). Anyone who can edit a contact can set its GST treatment.

Record your GST registration

1. Open Settings › GST — Open your account menu, choose Settings, then GST under Money & tax.
2. Enter your GSTIN — Spine checks its format and checksum. A wrong one shows “This GSTIN isn’t valid — check the 15 characters.”
3. Choose your State — The GSTIN’s first two digits must match it. If they don’t, you see “This GSTIN belongs to” the state the GSTIN is from.
4. Add the rest — Enter the Legal name on your GST certificate, your Trade name and the date you were Registered on, and choose the Return period (Monthly or Quarterly).
5. Exports — Turn on We export under LUT if your exports go out zero-rated with no IGST. Leave it off to charge IGST on exports.
6. Save

Spine prepares GST invoices and a GSTR-1 file to upload. It never files your return or connects to the GST portal.

Set the default tax for new items

In Settings › Tax, under Default tax preference, choose the Intra-state tax (for example “GST 18%”) and the Inter-state tax (for example “IGST 18%”). New catalogue items start with these, and each item can pick its own.

Record each customer’s GST details

1. Open the contact — Go to Contacts, open the customer and edit it.
2. Choose the GST treatment — Pick Registered business, Unregistered business, Consumer, Overseas or Special economic zone.
3. Enter the GSTIN — It’s required for a registered business or SEZ. When you save a registered contact with a blank state, the state is filled from the GSTIN.
4. Set each address’s State — The site or shipping address decides the place of supply.

Tip

Importing contacts from a file? GSTIN and state columns are mapped too.

Next, see how Spine uses these details on each document in Charge the right GST on a document.