E-invoicing, the 30-day rule, and why importers get caught
The threshold has come down to five crore. There is also a 30-day upload deadline that is less well known and rejects invoices outright once missed.
Two numbers matter here, and the second one causes more trouble than the first.
The threshold
E-invoicing under GST applies to businesses with annual aggregate turnover above five crore rupees in any financial year. That threshold has been stepped down progressively, and each reduction pulls in a fresh set of businesses that had previously been outside it.
If your turnover crossed five crore in any financial year, you are in — the test looks back across years, not only at the current one.
The 30-day rule
This is the one that catches people. From 1 April 2025, businesses with annual aggregate turnover of ten crore and above must upload invoices, credit notes and debit notes to the Invoice Registration Portal within thirty days of the invoice date. After that the portal rejects them.
A rejected upload is not a warning. Without a valid IRN the document is not a compliant tax invoice, which has consequences for your customer's input credit as well as your own position.
Why this bites importers specifically
Import-heavy businesses tend to have invoice cycles that run on longer clocks than domestic trade — goods in transit, documentation arriving late from suppliers, credit notes issued after a discrepancy is settled at the port. Thirty days sounds generous until a shipment discrepancy takes six weeks to resolve and the credit note is issued against an invoice that is now out of window.
Treat the IRN as part of closing a shipment, not part of month-end accounting. If documents are only reconciled at month-end, some of them will be close to the deadline before anyone looks at them.
What to check
- Whether your turnover has crossed either threshold in any financial year.
- That credit and debit notes are being uploaded, not just invoices — the rule covers all three.
- That your GSTIN is correct on the bill of entry, so import IGST flows to input credit without a reconciliation exercise later.
- That someone owns the upload as a task with a date attached, rather than it being assumed to happen.
This is a compliance obligation rather than a freight matter, and worth confirming with your CA against your own turnover position — thresholds and dates in this area have moved several times.
The point where it touches freight is the bill of entry. If your GSTIN is wrong or inconsistent there, the import IGST does not flow cleanly to input credit and you are reconciling it manually later. We cover the registration consistency problem in the import documentation checklist, and our customs clearance team checks these details before filing rather than after.
Questions we are getting
What is the e-invoicing threshold in India?
E-invoicing under GST applies to businesses with annual aggregate turnover above five crore rupees in any financial year. The threshold has been reduced progressively over time.
What is the 30-day e-invoice upload rule?
From 1 April 2025, businesses with annual aggregate turnover of ten crore and above must upload invoices, credit notes and debit notes to the Invoice Registration Portal within thirty days of the invoice date. The portal rejects submissions made after that window.