How to create a GST invoice on your phone: quotation to payment

Why the quotation is the right place to start

It is tempting to skip straight to the invoice, but the quotation is where the commercial terms are agreed and where a mistake is still free to fix. Once you issue an invoice it has a GST number and a place in your return; correcting it means a credit note, not an edit.

Starting at the quotation also means the invoice is a one-tap conversion rather than a re-entry. In the walkthrough, everything set on the quotation — customer, line items, discount, place of supply — carries straight into the invoice with nothing retyped.

TDS withheld: the entry most software gets wrong

When a business customer deducts TDS, the money that reaches your bank is less than the invoice value. If you record only the received amount, the invoice sits partly unpaid forever and your receivables never reconcile.

Nidhi Books takes the TDS withheld as its own field on the payment, so the invoice closes at full value while the deducted amount is tracked separately for your Form 26AS reconciliation. You can also attach the payment proof to the entry, which is what your CA will ask for at year end.

• • Received amount and TDS withheld are separate fields on the same payment
• • Attach a payment screenshot or bank advice as proof against the entry
• • Anything paid over the invoice value becomes customer credit, applied to the next invoice
• • Section-wise TDS summaries (194C, 194J, 194I and more) come out of the same data

Delivery challans, recurring invoices and credit notes

Three documents cover most of what comes after the invoice. A delivery challan accompanies goods that move without a tax invoice, and can be raised directly from an existing invoice. A recurring invoice is a template that raises itself on a schedule — the right tool for a monthly retainer or AMC you currently rebuild by hand.

A credit note is how you reverse or reduce an invoice after it is issued — a return, a rate correction, a cancelled order. Because it is a GST document in its own right, it flows into your GSTR-1 as a CDNR entry rather than quietly editing history.

Does doing this on a phone actually work?

The whole walkthrough is recorded on a phone browser, not a desktop, and not a separate mobile app. Nidhi Books is a web application, so the same account and the same data are there whether you open it on a counter PC, a laptop at home or a phone at a customer site.

That matters most for the people who are rarely at a desk — traders visiting buyers, service businesses billing on site, and owners who want to check a payment without going back to the shop. Unlimited users are included, so the person raising the quotation and the person recording the payment do not need to share a login.