New Delhi – Since the government’s imposition of the Goods and Services Tax from 1st July 2017, the main talk has been around its compliance among the corporates.
The switch over or the adoption of this new tax reform and being compliant simultaneously has been under the observation for everyone. This created some unrest and rush among the companies to take the help and support from technology and tax software providers.
Various software companies immediately started rolling out their GST products that they felt would come handy to people. The tools that they offered are put into implementation by the businesses for better formalism of the newly amended tax reform.
The business has a tedious task that lies in front of them as they are facing repercussions of rapid reaction to the recently implemented GST. The lack of knowledge and experience is only adding oil to the fire as the woes have been continued. Most of the businesses and the users would not even be acquainted with the tax solution software and services as to how to use them.
Pavan Peechara, the director of Udyog Software, had some significant tips to share on how technology can be leveraged to deliver and implement GST in a sustainable way.
A) HSN an interesting option
A tool that promises to provide an easy and sustainable GST solution must have the HSN feature. This feature allows the user to search products with the unique HSN code and thus helps in easy identification and categorization of various companies and their goods and services that they provide.
B) Efficiency and cost effectiveness
The GST software should take care that the business meets all the compliance and provides its users with an affordable cost quotation.
C) Hassle free billing through Automation
The software should make the life easy by automatically calculating the taxes that are supposed to be levied. Features like these would make life easy as human errors would be minimized and the process of billing would be really fast.
D) Optimal Adaptation
One of the biggest aspects of a software for a business is the level of user friendliness it can offer to all the businesses and its employees. A quick learning through training and development leads to easy adoption and creates operational and logistic ease.
E) Filing tricky and cumbersome tax forms in just one click
Automation features should be provided by these software to an extent that there is no paperwork and the filing is taken care of by directly uploading the invoices.
F) Technology and innovation expedite tax forms
Technology is something that should make life a bit easy. It goes through millions of iterations and R&D before anything concrete is rolled out for the public. A firm or a corporate must adopt a software that caters to its needs in one go. In short, it should, be able, to incorporate all the changes in the various tax slabs that might happen for example let’s say the tax slabs change in the coming months or there is a new tax slab that is rolled out.
G) Anywhere and Anytime
The indispensable feature of the software would be that it could be used anywhere and anytime. Adding to that the software should have the provision to be operated both in the online and the offline mode. A software that today works beyond the 9-5 premises to access the required data is a big plus for the businesses.
H) An excellent customer support
Due to the unrest and the hype caused by the GST implementation, the software agency should take care to handle all queries put forward by its users. A good and a reliable customer support is something that is going to delight the users and thus would help maintain a strong association.
Before you go today and select a GST compliance software, there are a few questions that you need to ask yourself and hence eventually answer.
1) The number of branches your business has and the locations that it is operating from.
2) Clarity on the tax treatments for all the goods and services you provide. Clarity on what you sell and what you buy.
3) Understanding what kind of returns that have to be filed by yourself and why?
4) Ability to generate or do you have a good hands on to generate a tax invoice every time with the correct rates.
To make things work smoothly, hire a CA, sit with them and analyze your work. We today want everything to work out of the box. But for that to work, one needs to put in some effort and understand how the taxes work and how the software would work for that matter.
