What is e-way?

E-way bill stands for Electronic Way Bill. It is generate a unique bill number for the consignment involving the movement of goods. Introducing of Goods and Services Tax (GST) across India with effect on of July 2017 in the field of indirect tax reforms in India. E-Way bill website link https://ewaybill.nic.in/

The following are four key stakeholders of the e-Way Bill:

• Suppliers – Generate the e-Way Bills and reject the e-Way Bills generated by other party against his/her name, if it does not belong to him/her.
• Recipients - Generate the e-Way Bills and reject the e-Way Bills generated by other party against his/her name, if it does not belong to him/her.
• Transporters - Generate the e-Way Bills, consolidated e-Way Bills and update the vehicle numbers for the e-Way Bills assigned to him for transportation by the taxpayers.
• Department Officers – Verify the e-Way Bills and consignments carried with the e-Way Bills.

The major benefits are as follows:

The traders need not visit tax offices to collect and submit the Way Bill forms as used to be done in VAT regimes in some states.

• Average waiting time at mobile squad reduces drastically – As the verification of the e-Way Bill is done with the common portal, it will speed up the process of verification and allowing the vehicle to pass faster.
• Self-policing by traders. A trader while uploading gives the identification of the buying trader who will also account the transaction automatically.
• Environment friendly – The need of the paper form of the multiple copies of way bill is eliminated. Hence, the tons of paper are saved per day.
• Generation of GSTR-1 returns – GSTR-1 return of the supplier is auto prepared, hence he need not have to upload the same.
• Officials saved of monotonous work collecting and matching the manual way bill with the returns of the taxpayers.

Features of the e-Way Bill System :

• User friendly System – The system is user friendly with lots of easy to use operations by the users.
• Easy and quick generation of methods – There are a number of methods are provided using which the users can easily and quickly generate the e-Way Bills.
• Checks and balances – The number of checks and balances have been introduced as per the requirements so that errors/mistakes of the users are eliminated.
• Multiple modes for e-Way Bill generation – This system support different modes of e-Way Bill generation. The user can register the mode of e-Way Bill generation and use them for eWay Bill generation.
• Creating own masters – The user has a provision to create his own masters like customers, suppliers, products and transporters. The system facilitates to use them while generating the e-Way Bill.
• Managing sub-users – The taxpayer or registered person can create, modify and freeze the sub-users for generation of the e-Way Bill and assign them to his employees or branches as per need. This system also facilitates him to assign the roles/activities to be played by the sub-user on the system.
• Monitoring the e-Way Bills generated against me – The system facilitates the registered person to know the number of e-Way Bills, generated by other registered persons, against him/her. There is an option to user to reject these e-Way Bills, if they do not belong to him.
• Generating the GSTR-1 from the e-Way Bills – Based on the e-Way Bills generated, the system pulls the GSTR-1 related information and pushes it to the taxpayers GSTR-1 returns. This avoids the taxpayers in uploading these transaction details.
• Consolidated e-Way Bill – The system supports the transporters to prepare the consolidated e-Way Bill and hand over to the person in charge of the conveyance instead of giving the multiple e-Way Bills for movement of multiple consignments like parcel in one vehicle.
• Enabling the unregistered transporters to use e-Way Bill – There is a provision for unregistered transporters to enrol and create a user for him to generate the e-Way Bills and update the vehicle numbers.
• Alerting the taxpayers – The system alerts and notifies the users through the web and SMS about the various activities like new notifications, rejected EWB, verified EWB, etc.
• QR bar code on the e-Way Bill – The QR code on the e-way bill helps for easier and faster verification of the e-Way Bill by the tax officers.