GST Invoice Format & Free Bill Maker

What a GST tax invoice must show

Rule 46 of the CGST Rules lists the particulars. A bill missing one of them can cost your customer their input tax credit, so it matters more than it looks. The ones every small business needs:

1. Your name, address and GSTIN.
2. An invoice number of up to 16 characters, using letters, numbers, hyphen or slash, unique for the financial year. INV/26-27/001 works.
3. Date of issue.
4. Customer's name, address and GSTIN if they are registered.
5. HSN code for goods or SAC for services.
6. Description, quantity and unit.
7. Taxable value after any discount.
8. Tax rate and tax amount, shown separately as CGST and SGST, or IGST.
9. Place of supply with the State name. It decides whether you charge IGST or CGST + SGST.
10. Whether tax is payable on reverse charge.
11. Your signature or digital signature.

For an unregistered customer, name and address become compulsory once the taxable value is ₹50,000 or more. Below that, add them only if the customer asks.

Can a GST invoice be handwritten?

Yes. The law cares about the particulars, not whether a printer made them. Plenty of shops in Pune still use a printed bill book and fill it by hand. Just make sure the book has your GSTIN and running serial numbers pre-printed, and that you write CGST and SGST as separate lines, not one merged "GST" figure. The one exception is e-invoicing: if your aggregate turnover in any year since 2017-18 is above ₹5 crore, B2B invoices must be generated with an IRN and QR code from the e-invoice portal, and a handwritten bill won't do.

How many HSN digits?

Under Notification 78/2020-CT: turnover up to ₹5 crore in the previous year, 4 digits on B2B invoices (optional on B2C); above ₹5 crore, 6 digits on every invoice.

Tax invoice or bill of supply?

If you are under the composition scheme, or you sell only exempt goods, you issue a bill of supply instead, with no tax charged on it. This maker builds a regular tax invoice.

A quick example

A Pune hardware shop sells 10 bags of cement at ₹380 each to a contractor in Mumbai. Both are in Maharashtra, so CGST 9% and SGST 9% apply on ₹3,800: ₹342 each, total ₹4,484. If the contractor were in Bengaluru, it would be one IGST line of ₹684 instead. The maker switches between the two on its own when you change the customer's State.

Sources: Section 31, CGST Act; Rule 46, CGST Rules; Notification 78/2020-CT. The GSTIN check here verifies format and checksum only; it can't tell whether a GSTIN is active. Use the GST portal's Search Taxpayer for that.