GST invoices on a store you host

An order is not finished when the payment shows as received. The shop still has to hand the buyer a bill they can keep, and, when the business is registered, a tax invoice the books can use. On Marimart that page is printed from the order. It is not a separate product, and it is not filed anywhere by the software. Filing stays on the GST portal. This note is about what the store prints. It is not tax advice. Your accountant sets the rate and says whether the business is registered.

The short version is on the payments section of this site. A GSTIN and a tax rate print a tax invoice. Otherwise the page is a bill of supply. The same rule is written for staff in Invoices and GST.

What you enter once

Business details live under Setup, then Settings. That is the legal name, the address, and the GSTIN if you have one. The tax percent sits with the catalog, on the products the rate applies to. When both are in place, and the GST percent is above zero, the order page prints a tax invoice. It includes the legal name, the GSTIN, the place of supply, the taxable value, and CGST and SGST or IGST as applicable.

When the GSTIN is missing, or the rate is not set above zero, the same order prints a bill of supply. The buyer still sees the seller, the lines, and the total. There is no tax breakdown, because the store has not been given the facts that breakdown needs. That is a useful default. A shop that is not registered should not be handed a tax invoice with an empty GSTIN on it.

Customer-facing order pages show the lines, how far payment and shipping have got, the address, and tracking when a courier number exists. Staff print from the order in admin. The customer can open the same record from their side of the store. The numbers match, because both pages read the order that was saved.

Tax invoice and bill of supply

People mix the two names up, and the mix-up shows on the parcel. A tax invoice is the document a registered person issues for a taxable supply. The portal’s own guidance is the place to read the fields the law expects. The store’s job is narrower: once you have entered a GSTIN and a rate, the printout carries the fields listed above. Place of supply is what decides whether the split is CGST and SGST or a single IGST line. The store follows the place of supply on the order. It does not guess a rate you did not enter.

A bill of supply is the plainer page. Use it when the business is not charging GST on that sale. Composition dealers and shops outside the registration threshold are the usual cases, and again the accountant is the person who knows which case you are. The software will not register you, and it will not tell you that you must register. It will refuse to invent a GSTIN.

Prices on the storefront use Indian grouping, so the figure on the product and the figure on the invoice are the same kind of number a customer already reads. The invoice is in INR. Card numbers never appear on it. Payment state does: paid, pending, or the method the customer chose. A UPI or bank transfer can stay pending until a person on the staff marks it received. The invoice should wait for that mark if you only issue it for money you have. The order page will still show the lines before then, so packing is not blocked on a printout.

What the store does not do

It does not log in to the GST portal. It does not prepare GSTR-1, and it does not reconcile your GSTR-2B. Those jobs need the portal, the books, and a person who is allowed to file. A clean invoice makes that filing easier, because the taxable value and the tax lines are already on the order. Export of customers is a separate staff action, and it is written to the audit log. Treat an invoice export the same way: a named person, a reason, and a file that leaves the building on purpose.

It also does not store card numbers in order to print a bill. Checkout talks to a gateway adapter. Razorpay, Cashfree, and Instamojo take the card on their side. The order stores the result of that payment, after the webhook signature checks out, not the card.

If a shop sells some lines with GST and some without, set the rate on the products that need it. A single order then carries the lines you configured. Do not put a GSTIN in the footer of the theme as a substitute. The invoice reads the business details from settings. A GSTIN typed only into a page-builder block will show on the home page and will not print on the tax invoice.

A test order before you announce the shop

Place one order to your own address before the domain is public. Use the method you expect most customers to use. Open the order as staff. If the GSTIN and the rate are set, confirm the legal name, the GSTIN, the place of supply, the taxable value, and the tax lines. If you are not registered, confirm you got a bill of supply and that no empty GSTIN is sitting in the header.

Then change one thing and look again. A wrong place of supply is the usual miss, because it flips CGST and SGST into IGST or the other way around. Fix it on the order’s address facts, not by editing the PDF in another tool. The next print should come from the store, so the customer’s copy and yours stay the same.

The catalog and the invoice are the same products. A variant with its own price should show as its own line, with the size or colour the customer chose. A coupon reduces the amount the invoice totals. Shipping, if you charge it, belongs on the order as well, under the shipping rule you set. A pincode check that blocked the address should have blocked it before payment, not after the invoice exists.

Where this sits in the shop you host

The invoice is one more reason to own the store. The PDF is a view of a row in your database. You can reprint it after you move hosts. You do not have to ask a rented shopfront to release a year of bills. Keep the GSTIN in settings, keep the rate on the products, and send the customer the page the order already has.

When the rules change, read them on the GST portal, then change the rate in the catalog. The printout follows what you saved. That is the whole mechanism.