Invoice Generator India: GST-Compliant Invoice Template & Receipt Creator

• A GST-compliant invoice in India must contain 16 mandatory fields — missing any one (especially GSTIN, HSN/SAC code, or tax breakdown) makes it non-compliant and prevents the buyer from claiming input tax credit (ITC).
• Receipts are acknowledgments of payment received — simpler than invoices, but still legally useful as proof of transaction for both parties.
• Free invoice generators: Zoho Invoice (free for up to 5 customers), Invoice Ninja (open-source, free), Refrens (India-specific, GST-compliant, free for basic), and Wave (free forever).
• Time of invoice: under GST, a tax invoice must be issued within 30 days of supply (45 days for banking and insurance companies). Late invoicing can attract penalties.

Use our free Invoice Generator to create professional, GST-compliant invoices with automatic tax calculation — and our Receipt Generator for simple payment acknowledgments.

What Must a GST Tax Invoice Contain

Under Section 31 of the CGST Act, a tax invoice must include all of the following:

#	Mandatory Field	Example
1	Name, address, GSTIN of supplier	ABC Consulting, Bengaluru, 29AABCA1234A1Z5
2	Tax invoice number (sequential, unique per FY)	INV-2025-001
3	Date of issue	15 June 2025
4	Name, address, GSTIN of recipient (B2B)	XYZ Pvt Ltd, Mumbai, 27AABCX5678B1Z3
5	Name and address of recipient (B2C, if > ₹50,000)	Individual buyer name + address
6	HSN code (goods) or SAC code (services)	998314 (IT services)
7	Description of goods/services	"Web Development Services — June 2025"
8	Quantity and unit (for goods)	50 units, pieces
9	Total taxable value (before tax)	₹50,000
10	Applicable GST rate	18%
11	Tax amount: CGST + SGST (intrastate) or IGST (interstate)	CGST ₹4,500 + SGST ₹4,500
12	Place of supply	Karnataka (for intrastate)
13	Signature of supplier or authorised signatory	Physical or digital signature
14	Whether GST is payable on reverse charge basis	Yes / No
15	Total invoice amount (including tax)	₹59,000
16	Payment terms (recommended)	Due within 30 days

For B2C transactions below ₹50,000: Recipient GSTIN and full address are not required — simplified invoice acceptable.

---

GST Invoice: Intrastate vs. Interstate

The most important tax determination — getting this wrong is a serious compliance error:

Transaction	Tax Applied	How to Determine
Supplier and buyer in same state	CGST + SGST (each = half the rate)	Compare state in supplier and buyer GST numbers
Supplier and buyer in different states	IGST (= full rate)	Different states in addresses

Example — 18% GST, ₹50,000 service:

CGST @ 9% = ₹4,500 SGST @ 9% = ₹4,500 Total tax = ₹9,000 Invoice total = ₹59,000

IGST @ 18% = ₹9,000 Total tax = ₹9,000 Invoice total = ₹59,000

Total tax is identical — but the column headings and how the government distributes the tax differ. Using CGST+SGST for an interstate transaction is a compliance violation.

---

Invoice Numbering: The Rules

GST requires sequential invoice numbering within a financial year:

Allowed formats:

• INV-2025-001, INV-2025-002 (recommended)
• 2025-26/001
• Any alphanumeric format up to 16 characters

Rules:

• Must be unique — no two invoices with the same number in the same financial year
• Must be sequential — gaps are allowed (cancelled invoices) but going backwards is not
• Resets at the start of each financial year (April 1)
• Multiple series allowed for different branches/series (e.g., DEL-001 and BLR-001)

---

Complete Invoice Template

` ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TAX INVOICE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

FROM: TO: [Your Company Name] [Client Company Name] [Address] [Address] GSTIN: [Your GSTIN] GSTIN: [Client GSTIN] Email: [your@email.com]

Invoice No: INV-2025-047 Date: 15 June 2025 Due Date: 15 July 2025 Place of Supply: [State]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SAC Description Qty Rate Amount ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 998314 Web Dev Services 1 ₹50,000 ₹50,000 998391 Content Writing (20 hrs) 20 ₹1,000 ₹20,000 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Subtotal (Taxable Value): ₹70,000

[If INTRASTATE:] CGST @ 9% ₹6,300 SGST @ 9% ₹6,300

[If INTERSTATE:] IGST @ 18% ₹12,600

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TOTAL AMOUNT DUE ₹82,600 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GST is payable on reverse charge basis: NO

Bank Details: Bank: [Bank Name] A/C No: [Account Number] IFSC: [IFSC Code] UPI: [UPI ID]

[Signature / Digital Signature] [Authorised Signatory Name] `

---

Receipt Generator: Simpler Than an Invoice

A receipt is issued AFTER payment is received — it acknowledges that money changed hands. It is not a tax invoice and does not trigger GST obligations directly.

Minimum receipt contents:

• Receipt number and date
• Payer name
• Amount received (in figures and words)
• Payment method (cash, UPI, cheque)
• What the payment is for (invoice number reference, or purpose)
• Recipient name and signature

When a receipt is required:

• Cash payments (always issue a receipt for cash transactions)
• Advance payment received before supply
• Security deposit received
• Payments not against a formal invoice (rent, advance, fees)

Simple Receipt Template: ` ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PAYMENT RECEIPT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Receipt No: REC-2025-012 Date: 20 June 2025

Received from: [Payer Name] Amount: ₹82,600 (Rupees Eighty-Two Thousand Six Hundred Only) Payment mode: NEFT / UPI / Cheque No.______ Reference/UTR No: [Transaction ID]

Against: Invoice No. INV-2025-047

[Receiver Signature] [Company Name / Name] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ `

---

Free Invoice Generator Tools (India)

Tool	GST Support	Free Tier	Best For
Refrens (refrens.com)	✅ Full CGST/SGST/IGST	Free (basic)	Indian freelancers
Zoho Invoice	✅ Full	Free (5 customers)	Small businesses
Invoice Ninja	✅ (configurable)	Open-source free	Developers
Wave (waveapps.com)	⚠️ (manual tax)	Free forever	Simple invoicing
Vyapar	✅ Full GST	7-day trial, then paid	Indian SMBs
Tally	✅ Full GST	Paid	Accountant-managed
ClearTax	✅ Full GST + e-invoice	Free basic	GST-heavy businesses

For mandatory e-invoicing (turnover > ₹5 crore): ClearTax, Tally, or Zoho with e-invoicing integration is required — GST Portal-generated IRN (Invoice Reference Number) must appear on the invoice.

---

FAQ

What is the penalty for issuing a non-compliant GST invoice?

Under CGST Act: ₹10,000 or tax evaded amount, whichever is higher, per invoice. In practice, most penalties are for systemic non-compliance (missing GST filing, wrong tax calculation) rather than single invoice format errors — but the risk exists. Always use a compliant invoice format.

Do I need a GSTIN to issue an invoice?

No — if your turnover is below ₹20 lakh (₹10 lakh for special category states), you don't need GST registration. Issue a regular invoice without GST fields. Once registered, you must issue GST-compliant tax invoices for all taxable supplies.

Can I issue an invoice in WhatsApp/email PDF format?

Yes — GST law does not mandate a specific medium. An invoice can be physical paper, email attachment, or WhatsApp message, as long as it contains all mandatory fields. Digital invoices are equally valid for ITC claims.

What is the time limit to issue a GST invoice?

For goods: before or at the time of supply (or within 30 days of supply). For services: within 30 days of supply date (45 days for banking and financial institutions). For continuous supply (monthly retainer, subscription): within 30 days of the due date stated in the contract.