Why credit follows the GSTR-2B, not your books, since January 2022; how to match it to your register bill by bill; and what to do with each difference.
Credit follows the statement, not the bill
Since 1 January 2022, input tax credit can be taken on an invoice or debit note only if the supplier has reported it and it appears in your GSTR-2B (section 16(2)(aa) of the CGST Act, rule 36(4) as substituted by Notification 40/2021-Central Tax). The earlier margin of five and then ten per cent over the statement is gone. A bill in your books that is not in the statement is not credit this month, however genuine it is.
The GSTR-2B is a statement the portal generates for every registered person for every month (rule 60(7)), from what suppliers filed, and it marks each document as available or not. It is generated on the 14th of the following month.
The Invoice Management System decides what goes into it
Since October 2024 the portal’s Invoice Management System (IMS) shows each supplier’s invoice to you before the statement is generated. Accept it and it goes into the statement as available credit; reject it and it goes to the rejected section; take no action and it is deemed accepted. Keep it pending and it waits instead of entering that month’s statement. You can change an action and recompute the statement until the GSTR-3B for the period is filed.
Matching a statement to a register
Match on two things: the supplier’s GSTIN and the bill number. Numbers are written differently in different books, so set punctuation, spaces and leading zeros aside before comparing: INV/0042 and INV-42 are the same bill. Then compare the tax, head by head. Under a rupee on a head is rounding; more is a different figure. A bill whose number does not match but whose supplier, date and tax do is almost always the same bill, written two ways.
Every document then lands in one of a few places: agreed; agreed within rounding; the same bill with its number written differently; the same bill with a different tax; in the statement only; or in your books only.
- In your books only: the supplier has not reported it, or reported it for another month or to another GSTIN. Ask them to file it. The credit comes in the month it appears, subject to the time limit below.
- In the statement only: a bill you have not booked, or one that is not yours at all. Find the bill, or reject it on IMS.
- Tax differs: usually a debit or credit note on one side and not the other, or a typing error. The statement is what the credit is limited to.
- Marked not available: credit barred by the time limit of section 16(4) or by the place of supply rules. It goes to Table 4(D)(2) of GSTR-3B, never to 4(A).
Reverse charge and marketplace fees
A bill marked reverse charge in the statement is one where you pay the tax, in cash in GSTR-3B, and only then take it as credit (section 9(3)). It should be kept apart from credit the supplier paid.
The commission, shipping and other fee invoices a marketplace raises on you are ordinary supplier invoices. They appear in the GSTR-2B under the marketplace’s GSTIN and the credit on them is yours to claim; they are easy to lose among other suppliers because nobody books them as purchases.
The deadlines that remove credit
Credit for a financial year cannot be taken after 30 November following that year, or after the annual return is filed, whichever is earlier (section 16(4), as amended by the Finance Act 2022). A bill that is still missing from the statement by then is lost as credit.
Credit taken on a bill the supplier has not been paid for within 180 days of the invoice is reversed, with interest, in the GSTR-3B after the 180 days, and taken again once the supplier is paid (rule 37). Where the supplier had not filed its own GSTR-3B for the supply by 30 September after the year, the credit is reversed by 30 November and taken again once it files (rule 37A). Both reversals go in Table 4(B)(2).
What fynxIQ does with it
The Purchases screen takes the statement as the portal’s JSON or Excel, your purchase register in whatever columns it has, and photographed or PDF bills, and places every document as above, with the checks and the instruments behind them on the verified page. The credit it carries into the GSTR-3B draft is the statement’s, by heading.
Either download will do. Read from one seller’s own statements for six filed months, October 2025 to January 2026 and July and August 2026, the JSON and the Excel gave the same documents with the same dates and tax, and each added up, to the paisa, to the statement’s own summary of credit available.
In the app, on every plan, the free one included: GSTR-2B against your purchase books.
Which file to download, and from where: the list for each marketplace and the GST portal.
By Raunak Pathak, founder of fynxIQ, who files GST returns on it. Last updated 25 September 2026. This is general information about how GST returns work, not advice about your particular return.