Bengaluru: Indian Enterprise software company Tally Solutions, in association with a private media publication had announced the results of a study conducted among SME business owners on GST preparedness.
More than 750 business owners participate in the study and the results indicate that there is a fair distance to traverse before India Inc becomes GST ready. Some of the highlights of the survey include:
• 66% respondents have not adopted a software for GST yet
• 72% have not heard of invoice matching (one of the fundamentals of GST).
• 40% figure on lack of GST awareness further drives home this state.
Speaking on how Tally has solved for some of the problem statements that have emerged, Tejas Goenka, Executive Director – Tally Solutions said, “While the survey has definitely raised some key issues which need to be dealt with, we at Tally are happy that we have already provided some solutions. On the education front, our exclusive GST awareness blog [blogs.tallysolutions.com] has been in the running for almost a year now.”
Concerns over e-way billing
Tally Solutions has even raised their concern on the e-way Bill under GST. According to the company, while the proposed e-way bill sounds good, this multi- layer process will make the transport of goods very cumbersome and cause delay in movement of goods. The current format is
quite cumbersome and involves creating e-Way bills even though invoices are already uploaded – making it a multi-step process.
Simplification is definitely required here; also there is too much reliance on technology in every step of the transportation process, which small transporters will struggle with. When suggestions were sorted for the proposed e-way bills, there were overwhelming objections and suggestions from across industries. However, given the urgency of implementation, it has to be seen how much of stakeholders’ recommendations are taken into consideration. Small transporters and
small businesses are not yet GST-ready and aberrations like these will further widen the preparedness gap.
GST is expected to create free environment for businesses and smoother movement of goods, but the multi-layer declaration of details and verification under E-way bill may defeat the core design of GST – a Technology Driven compliance system.
Goenka also said that Tally had launched their GST ready software more than 3 weeks back which promises ease of use and simplicity like all our earlier products and GST billing from Day one.
“It has already been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. For those businesses who haven’t automated yet, we have partnered with CAIT and Acer India to bring Biz Guru, a one stop plug and play solution for accounting and GST which couples Acer’s hardware and pre-installed GST ready Tally.ERP 9. We are committed to helping business across the country be GST compliant,” he concluded.