Bill book format, free download

What is a bill book format?

A bill book format is a ready layout for the pad of bills a shop hands out every day, in Excel, Word or PDF instead of a printed carbon-copy book. It carries your GSTIN, a bill number, each item's HSN code, the taxable value, and the CGST, SGST or IGST split already in place.

A shop that bills customers every day used to tear a page out of a printed bill book, carbon paper and all. The format has not changed much: a header, a row per item, and a total at the bottom.

This page carries six ready files: two Excel workbooks, two Word documents and two PDFs. Each lays out the same bill book, built so the GST goes on it correctly when you charge it.

Pick by what your counter needs. Take Excel if you want the tax worked out for you. Take Word if you want to type over a layout. Take PDF if you want to print a stack and write bills by hand, the way the old carbon-copy book worked.

How does an Excel bill book format work?

An Excel bill book format is a working sheet, not a picture of one. Type each item as its own line with its HSN code, quantity and rate, and the taxable value, the tax and the grand total work themselves out. One cell switches the sheet between an intra-state and an inter-state sale.

Open the file and fill in the header block once, with your shop name, address, GSTIN and state, then save it as your own master copy. From then on each bill is just the item lines.

The item table gives you ten lines, enough for most counter sales. Use one line per item, each with its own HSN or SAC code and GST rate.

The CGST, SGST and IGST columns are driven off the supply-type cell at the top, so the sheet never charges both a state split and IGST on the same bill.

The Excel template, step by step

Does every bill book need GST on it?

Only a business registered under GST charges GST and issues a tax invoice from its bill book. An unregistered business issues a plain bill instead, with no GSTIN line and no tax on it. The same six files work either way; a non-GST shop just leaves the GSTIN line and the tax rows blank.

Whether a business charges GST depends on its own registration, not on what it sells or how it bills. A registered seller charges GST and shows it on the bill; an unregistered one does not.

The fields these files carry cover both cases. A GST-registered shop fills in every row. A shop that is not registered removes the GSTIN line and the tax rows, and keeps the rest.

What should never happen is a bill that shows a GSTIN without charging tax, or charges tax without a GSTIN on it. Either one is a bill a buyer cannot rely on.

Invoicing without GST

When does a paper bill book stop being enough?

Invoice Saathi is billing software for Indian businesses that raises compliant GST invoices and simple non-GST bills from one app, and works offline when the internet drops. A paper bill book cannot enforce a consecutive number across two counters, or turn a return into a credit note that still points back at the original bill.

A consecutive number is usually what breaks first. Two counters billing from two books, or one book carried over from last year by habit, is enough to issue the same bill number twice.

A ledger is the second thing paper cannot hold. It does not know what a regular customer already owes, and it does not know that last month's bill is the one a return now has to be credited against.

The billing screen stays as plain as the old counter pad: the items and the total. The tax split, the numbering and the ledger run in the background, and print or share on the finished bill.

Open the billing app