Buying guides
How to Choose Billing Software for a Small Business in India: A 10-Point Checklist
Billing software ends up holding your sales, your stock, your customers’ balances and your GST. Switching later is painful, so it is worth an hour of questions up front. Here are the ten that separate software you will outgrow in a year from software you can run a business on.
Key takeaways
- Compliance first: Rule 46 invoice fields, correct CGST/SGST/IGST and HSN on every line.
- Real double-entry accounting underneath, so reports come from the books and not a separate spreadsheet.
- It must keep billing when the internet drops, if you have a counter.
- Check what is in the free or base plan, and how you get your data out.
The 10-point checklist
- 1Compliant invoices: every mandatory GST field, a gap-free numbering series, CGST/SGST or IGST from the customer’s state.
- 2Speed at the counter: barcode scanning, search as you type, held bills, split payments, thermal receipts.
- 3Inventory that moves with sales and purchases, with low-stock alerts.
- 4Purchases and expenses with GST input credit, and GSTR-2B reconciliation.
- 5Real accounting: ledger, day book, P&L, balance sheet and trial balance generated from the transactions.
- 6GST reports: GSTR-1, GSTR-3B and HSN summary — ideally a GSTR-1 JSON you can upload.
- 7Works offline, on the devices you have: browser, Windows, Android.
- 8Staff users with permissions, so a cashier cannot delete invoices or see profit.
- 9Your data, exportable: Excel, PDF, Tally XML, and a full backup.
- 10Clear pricing: what the free plan includes, what the paid plan adds, and no surprise per-feature charges.
Questions to ask in the demo
- Show me a bill to a customer in another state. Does it switch to IGST by itself?
- Cancel an invoice. Does the number stay accounted for?
- Unplug the internet. Can I still bill?
- Show me GSTR-1 for last month. Can I upload it?
- Add a cashier who cannot give discounts above 5%.
- Export everything. In what format, and how long does it take?
A two-week trial plan
- 1Days 1–2: set up the business, import 100 items and your customers.
- 2Days 3–7: bill real sales alongside your current method.
- 3Day 8: record a week of purchases and expenses.
- 4Days 9–10: run GSTR-1, GSTR-3B and the P&L; compare with what you know.
- 5Days 11–14: add a staff user, try the phone app, try a day offline.
Common traps
- A low price that covers only invoicing, with stock, POS or GST reports as paid add-ons.
- “Accounting” that is really a list of invoices, not double-entry books.
- Data you cannot export in a usable format.
- Desktop-only software with no backup plan, or cloud-only software that stops when the internet does.
Frequently asked questions
Is free billing software good enough?
For basic billing, it can be. Check exactly what the free plan leaves out — GST reports, purchases and accounting are often paid — whether you can try the full product first, and that you can export your data.
Do I need separate accounting software?
Not if the billing software keeps real double-entry books. Your accountant can then work from its reports or a Tally export.
Can billing software file my GST return?
Most prepare the figures and a file for upload; the return is still filed on the GST portal by you or your accountant.
About the author
Written by the TripleBill team, the people who build the billing and accounting software this site is about. We check competitor prices on their own websites on the date shown above, and we say so when our product is the weaker choice. This article is general information, not tax advice.
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