E-Way Bill under GST: Introduction

E-way bill system is operational from 1st April, 2018 for smoother, swifter & easier inter-state movement of goods. Now the concern is what is E-Way Bill and what are the major things to know about it. How it has made transporter and traders job easier?

Well, Here is an complete introduction to the E-Way Bill that you need to know:

What is an E-way bill?

Now from 1 April 2018, it is mandatory for the person in charge of a conveyance carrying any consignment or Goods etc shall carry the invoice or bill of supply or delivery challan, bill of entry as the case may be and a copy of the e-way bill number generated from the common portal.

As per the e-way bill rules, e-way bill is required to be carried along with the goods at the time of transportation, if the value is more than Rs. 50,000/-. Under this circumstance, even if the consumer moves his own his goods he has to get an EWB. He can get the e-way bill generated from the taxpayer or supplier, based on the bill or invoice issued by him. The consumer can also enroll as citizen and generate the e-way bill himself.

 Now,  the first question is what is an E-Way Bill? Well E-way bill is a document required to be carried by a person in charge of the conveyance carrying any consignment of goods of value exceeding fifty thousand rupees as mandated by the Government in terms of Section 68 of the Goods and Services Tax Act read with Rule 138 of the rules framed thereunder. It is generated from the GST Common Portal for eWay bill system by the registered persons or transporters who cause movement of goods of consignment before commencement of such movement.

For transportation of goods in relation to all types of transactions such as outward supply whether within the State or interstate, inward supply whether from within the State or from interstate including from an unregistered persons or for reasons other than supply also e-way bill is mandatory. Please refer relevant notifications/rules for details. However, from 1st April 2018, e-way is required only for interstate movement. The e-way requirement for intra state movement will be notified later.

The e-way bill is required to transport all the goods except exempted under the notifications or rules.Movement of handicraft goods or goods for job-work purposes under specified circumstances also requires e-way bill even if the value of consignment is less than fifty thousand rupees.

Why it is mandatory or required is Government may require the person in charge of a conveyance carrying any consignment of goods of value exceeding 50,000/- amount as may be specified to carry with him such documents and such devices as may be prescribed under Section 68 of the Act mandates that. Rule 138 of CGST Rules, 2017 prescribes e-way bill as the document to be carried for the consignment of goods in certain prescribed cases.Hence e-way bill generated from the common portal is required.

The E-Way Bill has be to be generated by consignor or consignee, as a registered person or a transporter of the goods can generate the e-way bill. The unregistered transporter can enroll on the common portal and generate the e-way bill for movement of goods for his clients. Any person can also enroll and generate the e-way bill for movement of goods for his/her own use.

The pre-requisite for generation of eway bill is that the person who generates eway bill should be a registered person on GST portal and he should register in the eway bill portal. If the transporter is not registered person under GST it is mandatory for him to get enrolled on e-waybill portal before generation of the e-way bill. The documents such as tax invoice or bill of sale or delivery challan and Transporter’s Id, who is transporting the goods with transporter document number or the vehicle number in which the goods are transported, must be available with the person who is generating the e-way bill.

Sometimes, the supplier prepares the bill from his business premises to consignee, but moves the consignment from some others’ premises to the consignee as per the business requirements. This is known as ‘Billing From’ and ‘Dispatching From’. E-way bill system has provision for this.In the e-way bill form, there are two portions under ‘FROM’ section. In the left hand side - ‘Bill From’ supplier’s GSTIN and trade name are entered and in the right hand side - ‘Dispatch From’, address of the dispatching place is entered. The other details are entered as per the invoice. In case Bill From location State is different from the State of Dispatch the Tax components are entered as per the State (Bill From). That is, if the billing party is inter-state for the supplier, IGST is entered and if the billing party is intra-state for the supplier, the SGST and CGST are entered irrespective of movement of goods whether movement happened within state or outside the state.

While generating e-way bill the taxpayer has a provision to enter the transporter id in the transportation details section. If he enters 15 digits transporter id provided by his transporter, the e-way bill will be assigned to that transporter. Subsequently, the transporter can log in and update further transportation details in Part B of eway bill.

How to Make or Generate An E-Way Bill:

Well it has two parts, Part -A and Part - B. Now, Part-A Slip is a temporary number generated after entering all the details in PART-A. This can be shared or used by transporter or yourself later to enter the PART-B and generate the E-way Bill. This will be useful, when you have prepared invoice relating to your business transaction, but don’t have the transportation details. Thus you can enter invoice details in Part A of eway bill and keep it ready for entering details of mode of transportation in Part B of eway bill.

Part-A Slip is entry made by user to temporarily store the document details on the e-way bill system. Once the goods are ready for movement from the business premises and transportation details are known, the user can enter the Part-B details and generate the e-way bill for movement of goods. Hence, Part-B details convert the Part-A slip into e-way bill.

The registered person can generate the e-way bill from his account from any registered place of business. However, he/she needs to enter the address accordingly in the e-way bill. He/she can also create sub-users for a particular business place and assigned the role for generating the e-way bill to that sub user for that particular business place.

Utility of two parts in E Way Bill

BIGGEST REASON IS THE E-WAY BILL CANNOT BE MODIFIED:

The e-way bill once generated cannot be edited or modified. Only Part-B can be updated. However, if e-way bill is generated with wrong information, it can be cancelled and generated afresh. The cancellation is required to be done within twenty four hours from the time of generation.

The system allows editing the details of e-way bill entries before submission. However, if the products/commodities details are entered, it will not allow editing some fields as the tax rates will change. To enable this, please delete the products and edit the required fields and enter the products again.

Moreover, sometimes taxpayer wants to move the goods himself. E-way bill Portal expects the user to enter transporter ID or vehicle number. So if he wants to move the goods himself, he can enter his GSTIN in the transporter Id field and generate Part-A Slip. This indicates to the system that he is a transporter and he can enter details in Part-B later when transportation details are available.

If the consignor or consignee is unregistered taxpayer and not having GSTIN, then user has to enter ‘URP’ [Unregistered Person] in corresponding GSTIN column.

Validity of An EWB or E-Way Bill:

Validity of the e-way bill depends upon the distance the goods have to be transported. In case of regular vehicle or transportation modes, for every 100 Km or part of its movement, one day validity has been provided. And in case of Over Dimensional Cargo vehicles, for every 20 Kms or part of its movement, one day validity is provided. And this validity expires on the midnight of last day.

This can be explained by following examples –

(i) Suppose an e-way bill is generated at 00:04 hrs. on 14th March. Then first day would end on 12:00 midnight of 15 -16 March. Second day will end on 12:00 midnight of 16 -17 March and so on.

(ii) Suppose an e-way bill is generated at 23:58 hrs. on 14th March. Then first day would end on 12:00 midnight of 15 -16 March. Second day will end on 12:00 midnight of 16 -17 March and so on.

The validity of the e-way bill starts when first entry is made in Part-B i.e. vehicle entry is made first time in case of road transportation or first transport document number entry in case of rail/air/ship transportation, whichever is the first entry.It may be noted that validity is not re-calculated for subsequent entries in Part-B. What are these Part B we will discuss later in this article.

The validity period of the EWB is calculated based on the ‘approx. distance’ entered while generating the EWB. For every 100Kmsone day is a validity period for EWB as per rule and for part of 100 KM one more day is added. For ex. If approx. distance is 310Kms then validity period is 3+1 days.For movement of Over Dimensional Cargo (ODC), the validity is one day for every 20 KM(instead of 100 KM)and for every 20KM or part thereof one more day is added.Please refer relevant rules for details.

The transporter, who is carrying the consignment as per the e-way bill system at the time of expiry of validity period, can extend the validity period.

One can extend the validity of the e-way bill, if the consignment is not being reached the destination within the validity period due to exceptional circumstance like natural calamity, law and order issues, trans-shipment delay, accident of conveyance, etc. The transporter needs to explain this reason in details while extending the validity period.

There is an option under e-way bill to extend the validity period. This option is available for extension of e-way bill before 4 hours and after 4 hours of expiry of the validity. Here, transporter will enter the e-way bill number and enter the reason for the requesting the extension, from place (current place), approximate distance to travel and Part-B details. It may be noted that he cannot change the details of Part-A. He will get the extended validity based on the remaining distance to travel.

Entering The Vehicle Number:

The system expects you to enter the vehicle number details in proper format. Please see the format details in the help with the vehicle entry field. If is not done The system shows the ‘Invalid Format’ when we are trying to enter the vehicle number.

To enable proper entry of the vehicle number, the following formats have been provided for the vehicle number:

Format	RC Numbers	Example Entry
ABC1234	DEF 234	DEF0234
AB123456	UP 1 345	UP010345
AB12A1234	AP 5 P 23	AP05P0023
AB12AB1234	TN 10 DE 45	TN10DE0045
AB12ABC1234	KE 3 PEW 1265	KE03PEW1265
DFXXXXXXXXXXXXX	For Defence Vehicle, start with DF	DF02K123
TRXXXXXXXXXXXXX	For Temp RC Vehicle, start with TR	TRKA01000002
BPXXXXXXXXXXXXX	For Bhutan Vehicle, start with BP
NPXXXXXXXXXXXXX	For Nepal Vehicle, start with BP

If the RC book has vehicle number like DL1A123, then you enter as DL01A0123. The vehicle entered in the e-way bill system is only for information and GST officer will accept this variation.

To check the EWB is authenticated or not any person can verify the authenticity or the correctness of e-way bill by entering EWB No, EWB Date, Generator ID and Doc No in the search option of EWB Portal.

Lastly, if you have lots and lots of goods to transport and One giant truck is not sufficient for you, you need more than 1 carrier then what to do?

Well,

Where the goods are being transported in a semi knocked down or completely knocked down condition, the EWB shall be generated for each of such vehicles based on the delivery challans issued for that portion of the consignment as per CGST Rule 55 which provides as under:

(a) Supplier shall issue the complete invoice before dispatch of the first consignment;

(b) Supplier shall issue a delivery challan for each of the subsequent consignments, giving reference of the invoice;

(c) each consignment shall be accompanied by copies of the corresponding delivery challan along with a duly certified copy of the invoice; and

(d) Original copy of the invoice shall be sent along with the last consignment

Please note that multiple EWBs are required to be generated in this situation. That is, the EWB has to be generated for each consignment based on the delivery challan details along with the corresponding vehicle number. Hope this has helped you understanding the basics of the E-Way bill. 

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