GSTZen uses different date fields for different purposes and allows downloads of reports filtered by these fields. In this article we define these fields and their purpose.

Invoice Date or Credit Note Date

This is the simplest date field to understand and it refers to the date of an invoice or credit note. This is field is applicable both to invoices in the Books of Accounts (Sales and Purchase registers) as well invoices in the GST Returns (GSTR-1 and GSTR-2A).

Record Date (also called as Booking Date)

Record date is an optional field introduced by GSTZen and indicates the return period in which you want to report a particular invoice. By default the record date is blank, in which case GSTZen will consider the Record date to be the Invoice date.

Record date is commonly used for Purchase invoices when a taxpayer wants to claim ITC for invoices in future months. For example, say a purchase invoice is dated July 31, 2017 and the goods for that invoice arrive only on August 3, 2017, the taxpayer will not be able to claim credit while filing GSTR-3B for the month of July 2017. In such a case, the taxpayer can claim credit while filing August GSTR-3B and mention record date as August, 2017.

In the case of a Sales Invoices, taxpayer can use record date to indicate that they what to report an older invoice while filing GSTR-1. For example, taxpayer has missed reporting an invoice dated March 31, 2017 and wants to report it in the month of September 2018, they can set the record date as September 2018, and GSTZen will include this invoice in the GSTR-1 for September 2018.

Record Date is applicable only for invoices in Books of Accounts and is not applicable to invoices present in the GST Returns (GSTR-1 and GSTR-2A).

Note that Record Date is always greater than or equal to the month of the Invoice (since one can upload or claim credit for an Invoice only after it is issued).

Filing period

Filing period is the return month in which a particular invoice is reported in the GST Returns. For a sales invoice dated August 1, 2017 reported in GSTR-1 of September 2017, the filing period is September 2017. This same invoice will appear in the recipient's GSTR-2A and have filing period September 2017.

Note that Filing Period is always greater than or equal to the month of the Invoice (since one can upload or claim credit for an Invoice only after it is issued).

GSTZen Reports filtered by Invoice Date, Record Date, and Filing Period

GSTZen provides Sales Reconcilation reports (Books vs GSTR-1) and Purchase Reconcilationn Reports (Books vs GSTR-2A). Each row in the report is labelled either

• Books and Portal - indicating a match between an invoice in the Books of accounts and invoice in the Government Portal (either GSTR-1 or GSTR-2A)
• Only in Books - indicating an invoice in the Books of accounts without a matching invoice in the Government Portal
• Only in Portal - indicating an invoice in the Government Portal (i.e. GSTR-1 or GSTR-2A) without a matching invoice in the Books of accounts.

The Reconcilation reports are available filtered by Invoice Date, Record Date or Filing Period.

Report filtered by Invoice Date

This report is useful to compare Books of accounts with data present in the Government portal. To understand which invoices are present in a particular report, let us consider the report for 2017-18. The report will contain "Only in Books" invoices with invoice date in the year 2017-18 and "Only in Portal" invoices with invoice date in the year 2017-18. For "Books and Portal" invoices there are two Invoice dates, the Books Invoice Date and the Portal Invoice Date. The report will contain such invoices where the Books Invoice Date is in the year 2017-18 irrespective of the Portal Invoice Date.

The following table illustrates in which yearly reconciliation report various invoices (with different values of invoice dates record dates, and filing periods) will be present.

Report filtered by Record Date

This report is mainly useful to compare to compare ITC claimed in a particular GSTR-3B period (month or year) with credit available in GSRT-2A against those invoices.

To understand which invoices are present in a particular report, let us consider the report for 2017-18. The report will contain "Only in Books" invoices with record date in the year 2017-18 and "Only in Portal" invoices with invoice date (since there is no concept of Record date for such invoices) in the year 2017-18, and "Books and Portal" invoices with record date in the year 2017-18.

The following table illustrates in which yearly reconciliation report various invoices (with different values of invoice dates record dates, and filing periods) will be present.

Report filtered by Filing Period

This report is very useful in responding to a notice from the tax officer asking the taxpayer to explain differences between GSTR-3B and GSTR-2A. By comparing against GSTR-2A of a particular filing period (month, quarter, or year) the taxpayer can identify whether they have claimed credit in different periods.

To understand which invoices are present in a particular report, let us consider the report for 2017-18. The report will contain "Only in Books" invoices with record date in the year 2017-18 and "Only in Portal" invoices with filing period in the year 2017-18, and "Books and Portal" invoices with filing period in the year 2017-18.

The following table illustrates in which yearly reconciliation report various invoices (with different values of invoice dates record dates, and filing periods) will be present.