GST E-invoice - How to solve ERP issue when sales entry is posted but IRN has failed?

Imagine a situation where the transaction is sent for IRN generation to the IRP and due to any reason or any validation error, the IRN generation Fails and the ERP does not receive IRN for the transaction leading to non-printing of invoice. 

In such a scenario, the sale transaction entry is already posted in books but invoice does not get printed due to non availability of IRN. This leads to incorrect recognition of sales in the books. In case the quantum of such sale transactions is low, the same can be handled manually by reversing the sale transaction entry, but in case the quantum of  such transactions is high, handling them manually would be a biggest challenge for businesses. 

Let's discuss on how to handle such critical and practical business scenario through the below flow diagram:

Details on the flow diagram

• Failure due to network issue at government's end or at business's end
• Retrigger same invoice transaction again at regular intervals until the IRN is received.
• In case the IRN generation is still pending at the end of the day, flag all such transactions as ‘IRN Failed' in the system automatically at the day end.
• System to be configured in such a manner that it picks up all such flagged transactions and reverses them automatically through auto job programs before the start of next day.
• Failure due to Master Data such as Incorrect GSTIN, Incorrect PIN code, Incorrect Tax Rate, Incorrect HSN, etc.
• Reverse billing and Accounting entry followed by correction of Master data. Once corrected, create new billing/accounting & trigger the transaction to IRP with correct master data.
• In case the IRN generation is still pending at the end of the day, flag all such transactions as ‘IRN Failed' in the system automatically at the day end.
• System to be configured in such a manner that it picks up all such flagged transactions and reverses them automatically through auto job programs before the start of next day.

In the above steps where master data is corrected, the retriggering functionality needs to be triggered by the user so that the system knows when to retrigger a particular transaction. On a click of a button, the entire transaction is sent to IRP for fetching the IRN.

How will the system know which transaction is failed due to network issue and which has failed due to master data issue?

Every error is linked to a unique error code in the IRP system which is sent back as response to the ERP in case of failure.

List of error codes along with their description is given in the link below:
https://einv-apisandbox.nic.in/api-error-codes-list.html

In case the response is received with error other than the validation error codes mentioned, the system can be configured to keep retriggering the transaction unless the validation error related code is received.

This automation and configuration would help in avoiding cancellation of sales due to unavoidable network connectivity issues. Retriggering would ensure that IRN gets generated automatically as and when the network issue gets resolved and both business and government systems are able to interact.

Important links for the readers

• FAQ on manual creation of e-invoice using the government's e-invoice tool: Click Here
• E-invoicing FAQ's released by GSTN- Latest Version 1.4: Click Here