The latest code of centralized taxation, GST (Goods and Services Tax), has brought a sense of relief to the trader’s body in the country. Rather than dealing with a plethora of different Central and State taxes, businesses now only need to deal with one tax code. This has brought uniformity and ease of compliance. However, it does have some drawbacks for the SMEs who now have to file returns quarterly rather than annually as they used to do before. While it is true that now they don’t need to save the receipts for their business throughout the year, it has increased need the number of returns they have to file now. All this considered, it is important that traders make use of technology to streamline their invoicing process so that they are always GST-compliant and are able to file their tax returns accurately.
Logo Infosoft has released a relatively new application in the market called the CaptainBiz app which is designed just for the purpose of making your GST compliance easy. It helps you create Sales and Purchase invoices from both its mobile app and web interface while making sure that the data you enter is GST-compliant. It is a cloud ERP-based solution which means your data is accessible on the go and you and your team can easily collaborate on your accounts without the restriction of being in the same place.
CaptainBiz website – www.captainbiz.com
Android CaptainBiz app – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.co.vyapari
iOS CaptainBiz app – https://apps.apple.com/in/app/captainbiz-business-accounting/id1367196769
Use the mobile application to sign up and verify your email address. You can sign up both as an Individual or as a Business. Even your Chartered Accountants can register as CAs on the app and then the business owner can give permission to the CAs to be able to access his/her invoice and GST details on the application. The User Management section of the application allows you to add your team members as well.
Once you have signed up for the app, you can directly get started with adding your customers and inventory on the app. When you enter your customer GSTIN, the PAN details are automatically populated, indirectly offering a basic level authentication of your entry. Though businesses will prefer generating invoices from the desktop as a practice, using the mobile app offers you the unique feature of barcode scanning for invoice generation. This way of invoice generation is blazing fast and will be quite handy when you have a number of orders for material products and are on a tight schedule.
The Sales page of the application is where you actually get to see the intelligence build in this GST Compliance solution. When you select the item code from your inventory along with the customer, the GST amount is generated automatically. Even the discount offered by your automatically triggers a correction if the GST amount. To avoid any confusion, the developers of CaptainBiz app have used the same terminologies as used by GSTN along with pre-populated state-codes. Since this is a cloud ERP based solution, this data is expected to be updated in case of any change in regulation and can be a lot of help to business to avoid any goof ups and corrections later on.
For instance, it prevented me from entering a different delivery location for a cash and carry customer than what was entered for that customer in the Customers section while generating a Sales Invoice. However, it does not mean that you can’t make any mistakes at all. There are no validations for text fields (understandably!) and you can select GSTIN on a company location in Haryana while adding Kerala in the state column. So, self-validation is
important as well. There is a dedicated GSTR section on CaptainBiz app which generated GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B as per your sales data. Just a few details and you get an XML or JSON output for yourself which is compliant with the GST portal template. This means reduced time for your CA to quickly verify the data and file your GST return. There are other GSTR too like GSTR2 and GSTR6 but since we haven’t used those, we won’t go into their details.
Conclusion
CaptainBiz app from Logo Infosoft has good reviews from its customers as can be seen on its app page. However, there is still scope for improvement and you might face some problems. Sometimes you might see Java errors popping up rather than user-understandable error messages, there is no email validation for CA and anyone can register their business using your GSTIN number without validating if they actually own that business. However, the bright side is that the technical support team is not far and are highly responsive. Any issue you face can be easily solved with their help. All in all, aside from a few hiccups, you get an application that takes the stress of maintaining your accounts and filing accurate GSTR of your hands. For SME and MSE, an application like CaptainBiz is a worth investment to enable GST compliance.
