Who may file GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B quarterly, when to opt in or out, the monthly PMT-06, a quarter’s dates in order, and what the optional IFF does.
Turnover up to ₹5 crore lets a registration file quarterly
Under Notification 84/2020-Central Tax (the QRMP scheme), in force from 1 January 2021, a registered person whose aggregate turnover in the previous financial year was up to ₹5 crore may file GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B once a quarter instead of once a month, and pays tax monthly in between. That is the whole of the name: quarterly return, monthly payment. Exactly ₹5 crore is still inside the scheme.
Aggregate turnover counts every registration on the same PAN, but the choice is made registration by registration: Circular 143/13/2020-GST of 10 November 2020 says one GSTIN of a PAN may be quarterly while another stays monthly. The same circular says a registration whose aggregate turnover crosses ₹5 crore during a quarter of the current year is out of the scheme from the next quarter, and files monthly.
When the scheme began, the portal moved many small registrations to quarterly without being asked. Before you choose a frequency anywhere else, look at the one the portal holds for the GSTIN. That is the one your returns are due under.
The choice is made on the portal, in a three-month window
Rule 61A of the CGST Rules keeps the choice open for three months: from the first day of the second month of the quarter before, to the last day of the first month of the quarter itself. The same window serves to opt in and to opt out. It opens only for a registration that has filed the last return already due, and once made the choice stands for every later quarter until it is changed; nobody chooses again each quarter.
GSTN’s FAQ on the scheme gives the four windows, and puts the option under Services, Returns, Opt-in for Quarterly Return:
- January to March: choose between 1 November and 31 January.
- April to June: between 1 February and 30 April.
- July to September: between 1 May and 31 July.
- October to December: between 1 August and 31 October.
The IFF is for your buyers’ credit
A quarterly GSTR-1 reaches your buyers late. Rule 36(4) of the CGST Rules, as substituted by Notification 40/2021-Central Tax, allows a buyer credit only on an invoice you reported in a GSTR-1 or an IFF that appears in their GSTR-2B. An invoice of 10 July left for the quarter’s GSTR-1 reaches the buyer’s GSTR-2B for September. Furnished through the IFF by 13 August, it reaches their GSTR-2B for July. A buyer who files monthly notices the difference.
The Invoice Furnishing Facility is rule 59(2) of the CGST Rules. In each of the first two months of a quarter you may furnish supplies to registered buyers from the 1st to the 13th of the next month, up to ₹50 lakh of value a month. It is optional. After the 13th that month’s IFF closes, and whatever was not furnished goes in the quarter’s GSTR-1.
Two things follow. Sales to consumers are not furnished through the IFF; GSTN’s FAQ sends them to the quarter’s GSTR-1. And an invoice furnished through the IFF is not furnished again in the quarter’s GSTR-1 (Circular 143/13/2020-GST). The portal drafts the quarter’s GSTR-3B from the IFFs and the quarterly GSTR-1 together, so an invoice in both is an invoice declared twice.
Tax is still paid every month, through PMT-06
For each of the first two months of a quarter, tax is deposited by challan PMT-06 by the 25th of the next month. Notification 85/2020-Central Tax sets the procedure for those two payments, and Circular 143/13/2020-GST explains it. What is deposited stays in the cash ledger and is used against that quarter’s GSTR-3B.
A PMT-06 paid late carries interest and no late fee; the late fee is for a late quarterly return. Pay the fixed sum below on time and no interest is charged on the first two months even if their real tax was higher, provided the quarter’s GSTR-3B pays the rest by its own date (Circular 143/13/2020-GST). Each month’s amount is settled one of these ways, and the two months need not use the same one:
- Fixed sum: the portal fills in a challan for 35% of the tax you paid in cash for the previous quarter, if you filed quarterly, or for the whole of the tax paid in cash for the last month of that quarter, if you filed monthly. GSTN’s example: ₹7,000 paid in cash for January to March 2021 made a challan of ₹2,450 for each of April and May.
- Self-assessment: the tax actually due for the month, worked out from its sales, its purchases and the credit available, with the month’s own GSTR-2B as the guide to that credit.
- Nothing: when the cash and credit ledgers already hold enough for the tax due so far, or there is no tax, the circular says no deposit is needed.
A quarter has six dates, and they come in this order
The quarterly GSTR-3B is due on the 22nd for a registration in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Puducherry, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands or Lakshadweep, and on the 24th everywhere else. A monthly filer’s dates, for comparison, are the 11th for GSTR-1 and the 20th for GSTR-3B.
Take July to September. In the ordinary calendar, before any extension the department notifies, the quarter runs:
- 13 August: the IFF for July, if you use it.
- 25 August: PMT-06 for July.
- 13 September: the IFF for August, if you use it.
- 25 September: PMT-06 for August.
- 13 October: GSTR-1 for the whole quarter.
- 22 or 24 October: GSTR-3B for the quarter, with the rest of the tax.
fynxIQ prepares a quarterly registration a quarter at a time
The frequency is set on the registration’s GST profile, when it is added or later on the GST profiles page, and a firm’s client list import takes it as a column. fynxIQ does not read the frequency from the portal, so set it to match. With last year’s turnover typed in, the quarterly option disappears above ₹5 crore. fynxIQ looks only at that figure, so a crossing during the current year is yours to act on, on the portal first and then here.
A quarterly registration’s prepare screen asks which quarter, not which month, and reads the files of all three months as one return, filed under the quarter’s last month, which is how the portal labels it. A row of your own sales register dated outside the three months is named, and the return is held until you settle it. The portal’s TCS credit statement comes one per month, and each is held against the lines dated in its own month; with fewer than three, the return says which months went uncompared. A rate change inside the quarter makes the whole return transitional, so July to September 2025, with the new rates from 22 September (Notification 9/2025-Central Tax (Rate)), accepts both structures throughout.
The GSTR-3B draft for a quarter takes Tables 3.1 and 3.2 from the quarter’s GSTR-1, and Table 4 from the three months’ GSTR-2B added together; the Purchases screen names any month whose statement was not uploaded. The draft does not know what you deposited through PMT-06, so its cash figure is before those deposits, which wait in your cash ledger for that return.
On a practice workspace’s calendar a quarterly client’s PMT-06 is listed by its date and, once the date has gone by, shown as passed, never called overdue: it is a payment with no ARN to record, and whether it was paid is the firm’s to know. Reminder mails go out up to three days before each GSTR-1, GSTR-3B and PMT-06 date, the 22nd or the 24th taken from the GSTIN’s state code, and a GSTR-1 or GSTR-3B marked filed with its ARN stops its own reminder. The optional IFF is on neither, and a date CBIC has moved by notification is shown moved. The free late fee calculator has a quarterly choice and, for a quarterly GSTR-3B, asks for the state of registration to tell the 22nd from the 24th.
fynxIQ does not prepare the IFF or pay the PMT-06
It does not prepare the IFF, and it does not yet know which invoices went through one. The quarterly GSTR-1 it builds carries every document dated in the three months, the first two months’ invoices to registered buyers included. If you furnished any of them through the IFF, the prepared return repeats them and is not ready to upload as it stands. A quarter with no IFF is unaffected.
It does not work out or pay the PMT-06 challan, does not opt you in or out, and does not file anything. You upload the JSON on the portal and submit it with your DSC or EVC.
Try it on your own figures with the free GST late fee calculator.
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 4 October 2026. This is general information about how GST returns work, not advice about your particular return.