Buying Power Tools on a GST Invoice: What to Check

For a business, a power tool bought without a proper tax invoice costs eighteen per cent more than it looks. The GST you paid is claimable — but only against a document that carries the right things, from a seller who has actually filed it. A cash bill, a delivery challan, or an invoice with your name spelled differently from your registration is money you have paid and cannot get back.

What a tax invoice has to carry

Under the GST rules an invoice you can claim against must show, at minimum:

• The seller's name, address and GSTIN.
• A serial number from an unbroken series, and the date it was issued.
• Your name, address and GSTIN — matching your registration, not an abbreviation of it.
• The HSN code for each item, its description, quantity and taxable value.
• The tax shown separately — CGST and SGST, or IGST — with the rate against each line.
• The place of supply, which is what decides which of those two splits applies.

Every invoice this shop issues carries all of it. The HSN code is on each line, because it is per product and not per invoice, and the tax is broken out line by line rather than as one figure at the bottom.

The one that catches people out: place of supply

This is where a wrong invoice usually comes from, and it is worth understanding because it costs real money.

If you are registered in Maharashtra and you ask us to deliver to a site in Delhi, the tax should be IGST — not Delhi's CGST and SGST. The sale is billed to your Maharashtra registration and shipped wherever you say; the place of supply is your state, not the state the lorry stopped in. This is bill-to ship-to, section 10(1)(b) of the IGST Act.

It matters because a Maharashtra business cannot claim Delhi CGST and SGST. If a seller charges it because the delivery address was in Delhi, you have paid a tax you will never recover, and the only remedy is a credit note and a reissued invoice.

Do you need a GSTIN to buy?

No. The GST field is optional and plenty of orders come without one — a homeowner, a contractor not registered, somebody buying a tool for themselves. You still get an invoice; it is simply raised without a buyer registration on it, and there is nothing to claim.

If you are registered, enter it. Adding it afterwards means cancelling the invoice and issuing a credit note, which is a nuisance for both of us.

When the invoice is issued

Not when you place the order. Placing an order here is not a sale — nothing has been paid and nothing has been dispatched — so no invoice number is spent on it. The tax invoice is raised when the order is confirmed, and it carries the next number in an unbroken series from that moment.

What you get before then

A proforma invoice, from the moment the order exists. It carries every figure the tax invoice will carry and none of its claims: it is the document you send to your office to get a purchase approved, or attach to a payment. It says on its face that it is not a tax invoice, and it takes no number from the invoice series — because a purchase order that never becomes a sale must not leave a hole in your seller's numbering.

If you pay an advance to confirm the order, you also get a receipt for the advance. That is not a tax invoice either, and deliberately so: the tax point of a sale is the supply, not the deposit.

Practical things worth doing

• Check the GSTIN on the invoice against your registration certificate, character by character. One wrong digit and the credit does not match.
• Use your registered trade name, not the name on the door, if they differ.
• Keep the invoice with the tool, not with the accounts. A warranty claim two years from now needs it, and by then nobody remembers which file it went into.
• If something is wrong on it, say so before you pay. Fixing an invoice before it is filed is a phone call. After is a credit note.

Buying from us

We are an authorized Bosch dealer, so the tools are bought direct from Bosch and carry the manufacturer's warranty through Bosch's own service network. Every price on the site includes GST, and the invoice shows what part of it was tax. See what we stock or find the shop.

This is a plain explanation of how invoicing works here, not tax advice. Your accountant knows your situation and we do not.