GST billing and RA bills, the way Indian finance teams draw them

The seven invoice types

Most SaaS has one invoice type. Blueprint has seven — because Indian construction finance actually needs them:

• Standard — the baseline.
• RA Bill — running account with cumulative and previous-cumulative amounts.
• Advance — mobilisation advance against a contract.
• Retention — retained sum released on completion.
• Final — the closing invoice on project close.
• Debit / Credit notes — linked to a source invoice, GSTR-1 ready.

GST, handled

• Supplier + buyer GSTINs captured on every invoice.
• State codes compared to decide IGST (interstate) vs CGST + SGST (intrastate).
• GST rate + tax amount shown line-by-line.
• Invoice numbers sequence within the April–March financial year, not the calendar.

TDS Section 194C

If the payee is an individual/HUF, Blueprint deducts 1%. If a company, 2%. Either way, the net payable is computed inline on the invoice — no separate spreadsheet to reconcile.

Cumulative RA bills — first class

Every RA bill references the previous RA bill and carries both cumulativeAmount and previousCumulativeAmount. Stop maintaining a parallel ledger: the state is on the invoice.

Paise, not floats

Every amount in Blueprint is stored as an integer in paise. ₹12,34,567.89 is stored as 123456789. Across 10,000 invoices, there is zero float drift. Your CA will notice.

Line items, milestones, and BOQ

Invoice line items optionally link to a project milestone so the finance record matches the field record. You can bill against a BOQ item (quantity × unit rate), a time entry (timesheet → invoice conversion), or a free-form description.

Approvals, workflow, history

Invoices move through draft → submitted → approved → issued → partially_paid → paid, with a rejection branch and an optional cancellation path. Every transition records who, when, and why (for rejections). An invoice status history table is attached to every invoice.

PDF output

Invoices render to PDF through pdfkit with all statutory fields included, ready to send to clients or attach to GSTR-1.

What we deliberately don't have

• "Estimates" that pretend to be invoices.
• Multi-currency by default — INR is first-class.
• Rounding you can't audit.