From 1 April 2025, taxpayers with annual aggregate turnover (AATO) of ₹10 crore or more cannot report an e-invoice, credit note or debit note on the IRP if its document date is more than 30 days before the reporting date. For example, an invoice dated 1 April 2025 cannot be reported after 30 April 2025. Businesses below ₹10 crore currently have no such restriction.
For most e-invoicing businesses, "generate the IRN later" used to be a workable habit. For larger businesses, it no longer is. Since 1 April 2025, taxpayers with annual aggregate turnover of ₹10 crore or more cannot report documents to the Invoice Registration Portal once they are more than 30 days old. This guide explains the rule, how to count the 30 days and how to set up your process so it never bites.
What is the e-invoice 30-day reporting limit?
The rule comes from a GSTN advisory dated 5 November 2024. Its key points are:
- From 1 April 2025, taxpayers with AATO of ₹10 crore and above are not allowed to report e-invoices older than 30 days from the date of reporting on IRP portals.
- It applies to all document types for which an IRN is generated — invoices, credit notes and debit notes.
- The IRP has a built-in validation that blocks reporting after the 30-day window.
- There is no such restriction for taxpayers with AATO below ₹10 crore "as of now".
The advisory gives its own example: an invoice dated 1 April 2025 cannot be reported after 30 April 2025.
How did the 30-day rule evolve?
The restriction was introduced first for the largest taxpayers and then extended.
| Advisory | Covered taxpayers | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| GSTN advisory of 13 September 2023 | AATO ₹100 crore and above | 30-day reporting limit introduced |
| GSTN advisory of 5 November 2024 | AATO ₹10 crore and above | Limit extended from 1 April 2025 |
This step-by-step pattern mirrors how the e-invoicing threshold itself came down. Businesses between ₹5 crore and ₹10 crore are covered by e-invoicing but not, for now, by this time limit. See the e-invoice applicability limit for the main threshold.
How do you count the 30 days?
Using the advisory's own example as the guide, the document date counts as day 1 and the last permitted day is the 30th day.
| Document date | Last day to report |
|---|---|
| 1 April | 30 April |
| 15 June | 14 July |
| 20 October | 18 November |
| 10 February (non-leap year) | 11 March |
| 31 March | 29 April |
Notice that month-end invoices cross into the next financial year. An invoice dated 31 March must still be reported by 29 April, so a year-end backlog is especially dangerous.
Because portal behaviour at the edge can vary with time zones and processing times, treat the window as closing a few days earlier than the theoretical last date. A practical internal rule is "report within 7 days, no exceptions".
Worked example: a missed batch at a Pune distributor
A Pune pharmaceutical distributor has AATO of ₹18 crore. During a software migration in October, 40 invoices dated 3 October to 9 October were saved but not reported to the IRP. Nobody noticed until a buyer chased a missing QR code on 6 November.
| Invoice dates | Last reporting day | Status on 6 November |
|---|---|---|
| 3 October | 1 November | Window closed |
| 6 October | 4 November | Window closed |
| 7 October | 5 November | Window closed |
| 8 October | 6 November | Last day — report immediately |
| 9 October | 7 November | Still open |
Suppose the batch is worth ₹42,00,000 of taxable value at 18% GST: ₹7,56,000 of tax, and a total of ₹49,56,000. The invoices for 8 and 9 October can still be registered if reported at once. For the remaining invoices, the IRP will refuse them. The distributor cannot simply get an IRN, and its buyers face a problem with input tax credit on documents that were never registered.
The distributor must now take professional advice on how to regularise those supplies. The commercial cost — strained relationships with buyers, held payments and adviser fees — far exceeds the effort that a daily IRN check would have taken.
What happens if you miss the 30-day window?
The IRP rejects the document. Practical consequences follow:
- No IRN, no valid invoice. Under Rule 48(5) of the CGST Rules, an invoice from a covered person issued without following the e-invoice process is not treated as an invoice.
- Buyer's credit at risk. The buyer may not be able to claim input tax credit, and will often hold payment.
- Return mismatches. The supply may be missing from auto-populated GSTR-1 data, creating reconciliation work.
- Credit notes blocked too. If you planned to reduce liability with a late credit note, that note may also be blocked.
There is no special "late reporting" button on the IRP. Discuss the specific case with your tax adviser instead of trying workarounds such as re-dating documents.
How to make sure you never cross the 30-day limit
The safest approach is to treat IRN generation as part of issuing the invoice, not as a later task.
- Generate the IRN at invoice creation. If your software connects to the IRP, make the IRN part of saving the invoice.
- Block printing without an IRN for B2B, export and SEZ invoices.
- Run a daily "pending IRN" report showing any B2B document without an IRN and its age in days.
- Escalate at day 7. Anything older than a week should go to the accounts head.
- Handle credit notes promptly. Raise and report credit notes for returns and discounts as soon as they are agreed.
- Plan around migrations and holidays. Clear the pending list before any software switch, year-end close or long holiday.
- Monitor IRP downtime. If the portal is down, retry the same day or use an alternate authorised IRP.
Billing Software by Betterwork requests the IRN when the invoice is saved and lists any document still waiting for one, which removes most of the risk of a forgotten batch.
Does the limit affect e-way bills or GSTR-1 due dates?
Not directly. The 30-day restriction is about reporting documents to the IRP. E-way bills have their own validity and generation rules, explained in e-invoice vs e-way bill. GSTR-1 continues to have its own due date; the e-invoice data simply flows into it. However, if an invoice is never registered because of the limit, it will not auto-populate, so GSTR-1 reconciliation becomes harder.
Edge cases worth knowing
| Situation | What to keep in mind |
|---|---|
| Turnover crosses ₹10 crore this year | AATO is assessed on an annual basis; watch the figure on the portal and set up controls early |
| Several GSTINs under one PAN | AATO is PAN-based, so every GSTIN is affected if the PAN is at ₹10 crore or more |
| Advance-dated invoices | Report on or after the document date; never wait until goods are delivered weeks later |
| Credit note for a year-old invoice | The note's own date is what matters for the 30-day check, not the original invoice date |
| IRN cancelled and reissued | The replacement document must also be within the window |
For the most frequent technical rejections, see e-invoice common errors.
Who in the business should own the 30-day check?
The limit is easy to miss because no single person "owns" IRN generation in many businesses. Sales raises the invoice, dispatch prints it and accounts files the return. Assign clear ownership:
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Billing / sales desk | Generate the IRN at invoice creation; never print a B2B invoice without one |
| Dispatch | Refuse to load goods against an invoice with no IRN or e-way bill |
| Accounts | Review the pending-IRN report daily; chase rejections |
| Accounts head / CFO | Weekly sign-off that no document is older than 7 days without an IRN |
| Sales team | Raise credit notes for agreed discounts and returns within days, not at quarter-end |
Credit notes deserve special attention
Credit notes are where the 30-day limit causes most trouble. Discounts negotiated after the sale, rate-difference claims and goods returns are often settled informally and documented much later. If your AATO is ₹10 crore or more, the credit note must be dated and reported promptly. For example, if a ₹2,00,000 + 18% (₹36,000) return is agreed on 5 November, raise the ₹2,36,000 credit note that week, not in late December. Details on credit note format are in credit note under GST.
Month-end close: a practical routine for ₹10 crore+ businesses
The 30-day window is easy to respect if reporting is part of the daily close rather than a month-end clean-up. A simple routine many finance teams follow:
- Daily: run a report of every B2B invoice, credit note and debit note dated in the last 30 days that has no IRN, and clear it the same day.
- Before dispatch: generate the IRN before goods leave, so the e-way bill can be raised from it.
- Day 20 alert: flag any document that is 20 days old and still unreported; it has ten days left.
- Month-end: confirm that the count of documents with IRNs matches the B2B entries you expect in GSTR-1.
Treat a document that has crossed the window as a problem to discuss with your tax adviser, not something to fix by changing the date. Re-dating an old invoice simply to get it accepted misstates when the supply happened.
Common mistakes with the 30-day limit
- Assuming the limit is "30 days from month-end". It runs from the document date.
- Leaving credit notes for quarter-end. They are covered by the same restriction.
- Ignoring PAN-level turnover, so a small branch GSTIN thinks it is exempt from the limit.
- Saving invoices offline during a migration and forgetting to report them.
- Re-dating old invoices to force them through, creating a bigger compliance problem.
- Not monitoring IRP outages, then losing several days of the window.
Key takeaways
- Since 1 April 2025, AATO ₹10 crore+ taxpayers cannot report invoices, credit notes or debit notes older than 30 days on the IRP.
- An invoice dated 1 April cannot be reported after 30 April; the IRP blocks late documents automatically.
- Businesses below ₹10 crore currently have no such restriction, but should still report promptly.
- A missed window means no IRN, which can make the invoice invalid and block the buyer's credit.
- Generate the IRN at the time of invoicing and run a daily pending-IRN check.
To see how automatic IRN generation fits into your billing flow, book a demo.
This guide is general information, not tax advice. Rules last checked on 20 October 2026; confirm with your tax professional for your situation.