Important Amendment in E-way bill w.e.f 01st January 2021

Due to various changes in the E-invoice mechanism and as per latest amendment in Rule 138 of CGST Rule. There will be a significant change in the process of generation and validation of e-waybill. W.e.f 01^st January 2021. Few of the changes are as follows

The Direct E-Waybill generation through Web/Offline/API will be blocked w.e.f 01^st January 2021 for the taxpayers who are generating IRN. The eway bill in respect of those invoices for which IRN is required need to be generated from e-invoice portal.  Eway bill for the Invoices having IRN number need to be generated using IRN as reference.

1. Person Eligible :

At present These Two categories of registered persons are covered under E-invoice.

i. Registered person having turnover Rs 500/- Cr or more : w.e.f 01^st October 2020

ii. Registered Person having turnover of Rs 100–500 crores : W.e.f 01^st January 2021.

2. Invoices For which Direct E-way bill generation blocked:

B2B and Export invoice having document type “TAX INVOICE” are not eligible for generation of e-way bill from the e-way bill portal.

3. Invoices For which Direct E-way bill generation Allowed :

Invoices where IRN Not required like B2C invoices, Import etc. Direct e-way bill can be generated for these invoices.

4. How To Generate E-way bill using IRN:

4.1 E-way bill for the invoices for which IRN obtained can be generated from the e-invoice portal . i.e. (https://einvoice1.gst.gov.in)

4.2 There are two way of generation of e-way bill i.e. single e-way bill generation and bulk e-way bill generation. The process of generation of e-way bill are as under

A. Single e-way bill: After Login into e-invoice portal, the user can generate e-way bill by putting IRN, Ack No or date. By this way the basic information contained in the invoice are prefilled in PART-A

i. Log on to https://einvoice1.gst.gov.in)

ii. By Putting any of the data e. IRN, Ack No or date the eway bill PART-A can be extracted.

iii. The Basic information contained in the e-invoices are auto filled in PART-A of e-way bill.

iv. Now the Transporter Details in Part-B need to be filled up

B. Bulk Generation of e-way bill.

The Bulk generation facility is available in the portal. For this  Bulk generation tool JSON file can be prepared based on the offline tool available in the portal (https://einvoice1.gst.gov.in/). The Data in the required filled is basically required for the transporter details. The PART-A detail will be auto filled up from the IRN Number and the PART-B details are being used from the input provided in the off line tool.

5. Importance of PIN Number in E-invoice as well as in e-way bill.

One of the Important change in the e-way bill is the calculation of distance using Postal Identification Number ( PIN) of the Seller & Buyer. The Distance between Two PIN  is being used for calculation of distance.

The distance will derive the validity of e-way bill(As per the notification dated 22 December 2020, No. 94 /2020. the validity period of e-waybill will be changed from 100 KM per day to 200 KM per day from 01/01/2021) .

Therefore, user generating e-way bill should carefully put the distance as it is being validated by the portal. If the distance mentioned is not with in permissible limit then error message may be appeared.

Brief About the change.

The Distance between Two PIN Number is being taken for calculation of Distance for eway bill. The validation rule for Distance based upon the PIN in e-way bill is as follows:

The Brief of the E-way bill validation with respect to PIN number  is as follows

 ( Source : https://einv-apisandbox.nic.in/version1.03/ewaybill-generation-irn.html#validations)

1. If the distance is passed as ‘0’ (Zero) and the distance between the PIN codes provided is available in E Way Bill database, the system will replace the distance as per the database. Passing ‘0’ is an indication that the user wants the system to take the distance as per the E Way Bill database

2. If the distance is passed and is differing by more than ±10% of the pin to pin distance stored in system, the response will have corresponding error code

3. If the distance is passed and the actual distance in database is less that 100 kms, the distance passed has to be less than distance in database plus 10% of the distance. (Ex. If the distance is 60 kms, distance up to 66kms is allowed)

4. If the distance between the two pin-codes provided is not available in E Way Bill database, E-waybill will be generated with an alert message as “The distance between the given PIN codes are not available in the system.” and it’s a responsibility of the generator to provide correct distance in such cases.

5. If from Pincode and toPincode are same then, maximum distance allowed is 100 kms. If the supply type is ‘Line Sales’, it can be up to 300 kms

6. The actual distance from source to destination cannot be greater than 4000.

7. PIN Codes are validated against the State they belong to, actFromStateCode- fromPincode and actToStateCode- toPincode

8. If the PIN Code does not exist in the master database of the E Way Bill System and the first 3 digits of the PIN code matches with the respective State as per the pattern of PIN code-to-State mapping pattern defined by postal department, then E Way Bill gets generated

6. PINCODE & ITS PATTERN

Postal Index Number (PIN) or PIN Code is a 6 digit code of Post Office numbering used by India Post. The PIN was introduced on August 15, 1972. There are 9 PIN regions in the country. The first 8 are geographical regions and the digit 9 is reserved for the Army Postal Service. The first digit indicates one of the regions. The second digit indicates the sub region or one of the postal circles (States). The third digit indicates a sorting / revenue district. The last 3 digits refer to the delivery Post Office.

( Source: Wikipedia )

The first digit of PIN indicates as below:

The first 2 digits of PIN indicate as below: