GST Year-End Checklist for 31 March

GST does not close its books for you at year-end the way accounting software does. Nothing forces a reconciliation, nothing resets your invoice series automatically, and nothing reminds you that a Letter of Undertaking filed last April does not carry over. Most of what needs attention before 31 March is invisible until it shows up as a blocked credit or a rejected export invoice weeks into the new year. This checklist is written to apply to any financial year end, not a specific one — the tasks and their logic stay the same; only the exact due dates move with the calendar, and a few of those depend on notifications you should confirm before acting.

The full checklist, task by task

Read this table first, then use the sections below for the items that need more context. Deadlines marked "confirm" depend on notifications that move; verify the current date on gst.gov.in or cbic-gst.gov.in before relying on it.

Reconcile GSTR-2B against your books

This is the single highest-value task on the list, because it drives most of the others. GSTR-2B is the static, month-wise statement of input tax credit available to you based on what your suppliers have filed. Your purchase register is what you actually booked. Over twelve months, small mismatches accumulate: invoices you booked that never made it into a supplier's GSTR-1, invoices in GSTR-2B that you never booked, and amounts that differ because of a rounding or amendment somewhere in the chain.

Doing this monthly is better, but a year-end pass is the last honest chance to catch what monthly reviews missed, before the year closes and correction gets harder. For the mechanics of matching the two documents line by line, see GSTR-2B purchase register reconciliation.

Where a mismatch traces back to a supplier who simply has not filed, the fix is not on your side — it is a follow-up email or call asking them to file. Build that list now; it takes weeks to clear, not days.

The Section 16(4) deadline forces the issue

Section 16(4) caps how long you have to claim input tax credit for a financial year: the return for 30 November following the end of that financial year, or the filing of the relevant annual return, whichever is earlier. In practice, that means the credit for invoices dated anywhere in a given financial year has to be claimed well before the following winter — and year-end is the natural checkpoint to find what is still missing while there is still runway to chase it.

The 180-day payment reversal

If you claimed input tax credit on an inward supply and have not paid the supplier — including the tax component — within 180 days of the invoice date, that credit has to be reversed, along with applicable interest, and can be reclaimed once payment is made. Over a full financial year this is easy to lose track of, particularly with suppliers on extended payment terms. Run an aged-payables report against your ITC ledger at year-end and flag anything crossing 180 days unpaid. The full mechanics, including how the reclaim works once you do pay, are in the 180-day ITC payment rule.

Re-verify vendor GSTINs before the new year starts

A vendor whose GSTIN was active on the day you first onboarded them can be cancelled or suspended months later without anything in your systems flagging it. Credit claimed against supplies received after a supplier's registration was cancelled is exposed, and the annual return process is where these gaps tend to surface — later than you would want.

A year-end sweep of every vendor currently on your active master data, checked against their current GST status, is cheap relative to finding the problem during a GSTR-9C reconciliation. This is exactly the kind of check that is impractical to do manually across a large vendor base but straightforward to automate — see automated daily vendor GSTIN monitoring for a way to run it continuously rather than once a year. You can also check any single GSTIN by hand at the GST number search tool, five free lookups a day, no signup required.

What has to be ready on day one of the new year

Three things need to exist before the first transaction of the new financial year, not sometime after:

Invoice numbering. Rule 46 requires each tax invoice to carry a consecutive serial number, unique for the financial year. Most businesses restart or re-key their series on 1 April to keep that uniqueness clean; whatever scheme you use, confirm it is configured in your billing system before the first invoice of the new year goes out, not retrofitted after a gap is noticed.

LUT for exporters. A Letter of Undertaking that lets you export goods or services without paying IGST upfront is valid for the financial year it is filed against, and does not roll over. If export invoices go out in the new year before a fresh LUT is filed, you lose the benefit for those shipments until it is in place. File it ahead of year-end so there is no gap. See LUT filing for exporters for the process.

Composition scheme election. Opting into or out of the composition scheme for the new financial year is done through Form CMP-02, filed before that year begins. Miss the window and you are locked into your current status for another year. See the composition scheme turnover limit to check eligibility first.

Turnover thresholds worth checking again

Several GST obligations are keyed to aggregate turnover in the preceding financial year, which means the number you just closed the books on can move you across a threshold you were not near before.

• E-invoicing. Mandatory once aggregate turnover in any financial year crosses ₹5 crore. If this year pushed you over that line for the first time, e-invoicing applies from the point notified for your bracket — confirm your effective date rather than assuming it. See the e-invoicing threshold.
• QRMP scheme. Available to registered persons with aggregate turnover up to ₹5 crore in the preceding financial year. Crossing that line moves you back to monthly filing for the new year; staying under it re-opens the option if you had moved away. See how the QRMP scheme works.
• HSN code digits. The number of digits required on tax invoices scales with turnover bands. Recheck which band you fall in for the new year rather than carrying over last year's format. See HSN code digit requirements by turnover.

Getting ahead of GSTR-9 and GSTR-9C

GSTR-9, the annual return, and GSTR-9C, the reconciliation statement for businesses above the applicable turnover threshold, both pull together figures your monthly and quarterly returns already reported. The work is almost entirely the same reconciliation this checklist has already walked through — GSTR-2B against books, RCM paid against RCM claimed, credit notes issued within the Section 34 window, and vendor status at the time of supply.

Doing that reconciliation at year-end rather than waiting for the annual return due date means the annual filing becomes a summarisation exercise instead of an investigation. For the mechanics of the reconciliation statement itself, see the GSTR-9C reconciliation statement, and for a year-round view of what falls due when, the GST compliance calendar lays out the sequence after year-end closes. A broader, ongoing version of this list — not limited to year-end — is in the general GST compliance checklist.

Underneath most of the reconciliation gaps above is the same root cause: a vendor's registration record moved and nobody's process caught it in time. The GST verification API returns registration details and GSTR filing history in a single call, at ₹0.50 per verification pay-as-you-go, so a year-end vendor sweep or an ongoing daily check does not require separate calls for status and filing data. Twenty free credits are available on email verification to test it against your own vendor list before year-end work starts.

Frequently asked questions