Introducing branches: Manage multiple GSTINs in one place with Zoho Books

As your business scales, you might branch out to various business locations spread across multiple states or diverge into new business verticals. In such cases, Indian law requires you to register for GST in each state where you open a branch. In order to make good decisions for your whole business, it’s very important to have complete visibility on the transactions happening across all of your branches and GSTINs.

That’s why we’ve introduced support for multiple branches in Zoho Books. You can now add more GSTINs to your existing organisation, associate them with branches, get financial insights from reports and file GST returns for all GSTINs in one place.

Note: This feature is currently available only for the users of the India edition.

Here are some of the highlights:

Set up multiple branches

You can create new branches for each business location you’re operating from. For each branch, you can assign a primary contact, associate the GSTIN and start creating transactions (Based on your Zoho Books’ plan you can add up to 10 GSTINs). Your current location will be considered as the primary branch and existing transactions will be mapped to it. If necessary, you can select transactions and bulk update the branch details.

Define transaction series for each branch/GSTIN

When you have more than one GSTIN, it is a good idea to configure a separate transaction series for each GSTIN. You can set the transaction series for each module based on the numbering that you want and Zoho Books will automatically generate the numbers for future transactions. For example, you can number the invoices for your Tamil Nadu branch starting with TN/INV-001 and your Kerala branch starting with KL/INV-001.

Capture branch details in transactions

Once you’ve created a branch and linked your GSTIN, you can associate the GSTIN with all your sales and purchase transactions, manual journals, and bank transactions. Based on the branch you’ve chosen, the address and the inter and intra-state taxes will be automatically updated. So, if you were using reporting tags to track transactions by locations you no longer have to use them.

Track performance with insightful reports

By now, you would’ve enabled the feature, configured the transaction series, and tracked the branch details in your transactions. Once all this is done, you can run customised reports and assess them branch-wise to figure out how profitable each branch is, which ones may need some improvement, and more. You can also get an overview of each branch’s performance as a whole right from the dashboard.

File GST returns easily for each GSTIN

 Filing returns promptly is important for staying tax compliant. But when you have multiple GSTINs, generating the summaries, verifying them, and filing them individually can be quite laborious. Zoho Books generates separate GST return summaries for each GSTIN, so you can pull and reconcile transactions, approve the return, make direct GST payments, and file them effortlessly.

Wondering how to get started?

First, enable the Branches feature by going to Settings and then Branches. Once you’ve enabled it, you can create branches, associate GSTINs and start creating transactions. For more information, visit our help guide on Branches and Multiple GSTINs.

Join our live webinar  

On 23 July 2020, we’ll have a live discussion of how Zoho Books helps you manage multiple branches and GSTINs, including a walkthrough of the feature! Register to save your spot!

Give this a shot and share your thoughts in the comments!  If you have any suggestions or feedback, please write to us at [email protected].