Discrepancy between summary in Excel template and Offline Tool

While preparing data for GSTR 1 using Excel template discrepancies may be noticed by the taxpayers in summary of invoices and other details displayed in the Offline tool and that shown in the excel sheet:

a.This arises because of validation checks performed by the offline tool, after data from Excel sheet is imported into it.

b.The invoices and other data that fail checks/validations, are rejected by the offline tool and hence the number of invoices shown in Offline Tool are less than that was originally entered in the Excel Sheet by the taxpayer.

 Rejection while importing excel or csv file in Offline Tool happens on account of following reasons:

i.Incorrect date format is entered in excel. The date format should be dd -mm-yyyy only (e.g. 01-Jul-2017).

ii.Incorrect invoice format entered in excel. Invoice number should be maximum 16 digits and alphanumeric. Special characters allowed are / (forward slash) and – (hyphen) only.

iii.There should not be any duplicate entry of invoices.

iv.Incorrect GSTN format entered in excel. GSTIN entered should be of 15 character & alphanumeric with no blanks or special character in between.

v.Incorrect data entered after decimal. Only two digits need to be entered after decimal.

It has been noticed that many taxpayers are entering data in excel sheet. But they are not using excel template provided by GSTN. Sometimes excel template, being used by taxpayers, has same format as provided by GSTN. However, in many cases these excels, used by taxpayers, do not have any validations, as put in the excel template provided by GSTN, given as part of Offline Tool. Use of different format of excel template, without validations leads to rejection of data on import to Offline Tool.

Thus taxpayers are advised to use Excel Sheet template provided by GSTN, as part of free Offline Tool, to avoid such mistakes and rejection of data, on import to Offline Tool and later on JSON upload to GST Portal.

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