GST compliance that understands more than your GSTR-2B.
A growing share of GST liability never appears in GSTR-2B at all. Reverse charge, services bought from outside India and supplies you document yourself are settled by rules and evidence — not by what a supplier happened to upload.
Embarc is building a compliance engine designed to reason about those transactions, show the basis for every conclusion, and say plainly when a position cannot be reached safely without a person.
The working principle
- Automate what can be reliably automatedThe repetitive comparison work, done consistently and the same way every period.
- Surface what requires reviewWhere the facts do not support a safe conclusion, name the question rather than produce a number.
- Explain whyEvery conclusion designed to carry the facts, the provision, the rule version and the reasoning behind it.
Matching invoices solves the easy half
Conventional reconciliation tools do one thing well. They take your purchase records, take GSTR-2B, and tell you which invoices agree. For routine domestic purchases from registered suppliers that is most of the work — and it is also where the tooling stops.
Reverse charge
The liability sits with you rather than your supplier, so there is no supplier upload to reconcile against. The transaction is real, the tax is payable, and the usual matching exercise has nothing to match.
Services bought from outside India
A foreign supplier files nothing in India. Whether Indian GST arises at all depends on what the service actually is and where the supply is treated as taking place — questions a purchase voucher was never designed to answer.
Documents you have to raise yourself
Where the recipient is the one who must raise the document, whether it exists — and when it was raised — is part of the tax position rather than filing housekeeping.
Credit that depends on payment
In some cases credit cannot be taken until the tax has actually been paid. The date the entry was booked and the date the credit becomes available are simply not the same date.
Transactions from earlier periods
An older transaction is governed by the rules that were in force when it happened. Applying today's rules to a transaction from several years ago produces an answer that looks confident and is wrong.
Positions only a person can settle
Classification and place-of-supply questions are legal questions, and two line items with near-identical ledger names can land in different places. Somebody has to decide — and the decision needs to sit alongside the transaction, not in an email.
Eight areas, one engine
Each of these is under active development, at a different stage of maturity. They are described here as what the engine is designed to do — not as functionality you can buy today.
GST reconciliation
Purchase records compared against GSTR-2B data in explicit tiers, where each pairing records the reason it was made in words rather than a similarity score a reviewer cannot interrogate.
Reverse charge management
Being developed to identify transactions where the liability may fall on the recipient, hold the obligation that creates, and carry it through to the credit it may eventually support.
Import of services
Designed to assess supplies received from outside India against the rules that decide whether Indian GST arises — the location of each party, what the service is, and where the supply is treated as made.
ITC eligibility & timing
Built around the idea that whether credit is eligible and when it may be taken are two different questions, and that the second one moves across periods.
Self-invoice & document tracking
Designed to record which documents a position depends on, whether they exist and when they were raised, so a missing document is visible as a gap rather than discovered at review.
Exception & review management
Anything that cannot be concluded safely from the available facts is raised as a review item stating the specific question — not silently defaulted to a number.
Return position preparation
Assembling determined positions into a period view intended for professional review. Embarc does not file returns and does not intend to replace the professional who signs one off.
Audit trail & rule provenance
Each conclusion is designed to carry the facts it rested on, the provision applied, the version of the rule and the dates that version was in force — so it can be re-examined later.
A different question about the same transaction
The gap between conventional reconciliation and what complex GST actually requires is not a gap in accuracy. It is a gap in the question being asked.
Ordinary reconciliation asks
“Does this invoice appear in GSTR-2B?”
- Is there a matching row in the supplier's upload?
- Do the invoice number, date and value agree?
- What is the total mismatch for the period?
- Which suppliers need chasing?
These are useful questions, and a good tool answers them well. They are simply not the only questions the transaction raises.
Embarc is being built to ask
“What is this transaction, and what do the rules make of it?”
- What is this transaction, on the evidence actually available?
- Which provisions apply — in the version in force for that period?
- Does a liability arise, and does it fall on us?
- Is credit eligible, and from which period can it be taken?
- Which documents does the position depend on?
- What could not be determined, and what would settle it?
We are not claiming every one of these is already answered automatically. Several are under development, and some will always end with a person.
The transactions that make GST difficult
These are the cases the architecture is being shaped around. Not because they are the most common, but because they are the ones where a general-purpose reconciliation has the least to say — and where the cost of a confident wrong answer is highest.
Services imported from abroad
Software, cloud, hosting and professional services bought from suppliers with no Indian filing obligation.
Reverse charge transactions
Where the obligation to pay sits with the recipient and the ordinary matching exercise has no counterpart to match to.
Transactions with no supplier upload
Real, tax-relevant transactions that will never appear in GSTR-2B, whatever the reconciliation says.
Self-invoice and payment dependencies
Positions that turn on a document you raise yourself, or on tax being paid before the credit is available.
Transactions governed by earlier rules
Periods where the provisions in force were not the ones in force today, and the difference changes the answer.
Credit that moves between periods
Credit that becomes available in one period, and stops being available after another.
Every tax conclusion should have a reason
A figure with no traceable basis is a liability of its own. The architecture separates what the books record from what the rules make of it, so a conclusion can be examined, challenged and re-run long after the period closed.
- 01
Transaction
What the books actually record
- 02
Evidence
The facts established, and by whom
- 03
Classification
What the supply is
- 04
Applicable rule
The provision, in the version in force
- 05
Tax determination
Whether a liability arises, and on whom
- 06
ITC & liability
Whether credit is eligible, and when
- 07
Return position
Assembled for professional review
- 08
Audit trail
Why the conclusion was reached
What a conclusion is designed to carry
- The source facts it rested on
- The GST provision applied
- The version of the rule used
- The dates that version was in force
- The reasoning, in words
- The assumptions and their limits
- Anything still requiring review
Rules are held with the dates they were in force, so a determination made today for an earlier period is decided under the rules that applied then rather than the ones that apply now. A repealed provision is retired by date rather than deleted, because the transactions it governed do not stop existing.
A determination is designed to be reproducible from its inputs alone — the same facts and the same rule version reaching the same conclusion, whenever it is re-run. That is the property that makes it possible to compare a position taken years ago against what was actually filed.
Accounting facts and tax conclusions are kept apart deliberately. What a voucher records is evidence. What the rules make of that evidence is a separate thing, and it belongs where it can be reviewed.
When the facts don’t support a safe conclusion, the system should say so
An engine that guesses at a missing fact is worse than one that names it. The facts a purchase voucher records are not always the facts a tax position turns on, and the difference is rarely visible on the voucher itself.
So review is designed as an answer in its own right rather than a failure state. Each item is intended to carry the specific question and what would settle it — which is a thing a person can act on, unlike a figure with a footnote.
This is the part we would rather be judged on. Software that always produces a number is easy to build and hard to trust.
- Information required
- A fact the position depends on has not been established yet. The engine names the fact rather than assuming it.
- Classification requires review
- The supply could reasonably fall into more than one category, and the categories diverge in their treatment.
- Rate confirmation required
- The applicable rate needs confirming against the notification in force for that period before a figure is relied on.
- Legal interpretation required
- The position turns on a question of interpretation that should be settled by a professional, not by software.
Designed to work with the accounting data you already keep
The engine is being developed alongside a TallyPrime connector Embarc builds and maintains. What is verified is stated as verified; what is planned is stated as planned.
- A TallyPrime connector Embarc builds and maintains, giving structured access to companies, masters, vouchers, outstanding items and standard reports
- Verified to date against one TallyPrime version — TallyPrime Edit Log 1.1.7.1. Other versions and editions are not yet tested
- GSTR-2B data taken from the portal download your team already obtains
- Writing back to your books is deliberately constrained: a single allow-listed voucher type, behind an explicit approval step, never retried silently
- Integration with other accounting systems is designed for, and not yet available
Built for the people who carry the position
Finance teams & controllers
Teams carrying the monthly close who need the difficult items surfaced early rather than found late.
CFOs
Where the question is not only what was filed, but whether the position behind it can be explained.
In-house tax teams
Specialists who want the routine work done and their attention spent on the positions that actually need it.
Accountants & CA firms
Practices running compliance for many clients, where consistency and a defensible trail matter across all of them.
Businesses importing services
Organisations buying software, cloud, hosting or professional services from suppliers outside India.
Businesses with reverse-charge exposure
Where a meaningful share of the liability is determined by the rules rather than by a supplier's upload.
Multi-location businesses
Several registrations, several teams, and one position that has to hold together across them.
Organisations seeking stronger auditability
Anyone who has been asked why a figure was arrived at, months after the person who arrived at it moved on.
We’re building this now
The engine is under active development. It is not production software, it is not certified, and we are not quoting a release date — the remaining work includes correctness and legal-review items that should not be rushed to meet one.
What we are looking for is a small number of businesses and accounting professionals who deal with these transactions regularly, and who are willing to look at early builds and tell us where the reasoning breaks.
What you get
- Early builds, with their limitations stated rather than hidden
- Direct access to the engineers building the engine
- Influence over which areas are built out first
What we ask
- Transactions of the kind that ordinary reconciliation handles badly
- Honest feedback on where the reasoning breaks or the output is unhelpful
- Review by someone in your team qualified to judge a GST position
Request early access
Frequently asked
- Is this another GSTR-2B reconciliation tool?
- Reconciliation against GSTR-2B is part of it, and that part is genuinely useful. But the reason we are building it is the set of transactions GSTR-2B cannot speak to at all — reverse charge, services bought from outside India, positions that depend on a document you raise yourself. Those are determined by rules and evidence, not by what a supplier uploaded.
- Does it handle reverse charge?
- Reverse charge is one of the areas being built out first, precisely because ordinary matching has nothing to match against. It is under development: the engine is designed to identify transactions where the liability may sit with the recipient, hold the obligation that creates and follow it through to any credit it supports — with anything it cannot conclude raised for review.
- Can it handle services imported from outside India?
- This is the case the architecture was shaped around. The engine is being developed to assess such supplies against the rules that decide whether Indian GST arises, and to state plainly which facts a conclusion depends on. Where a fact has not been established — and a purchase voucher often does not record it — it asks rather than assumes.
- Does it replace my CA or tax advisor?
- No, and it is not designed to. The system is intended to support finance and tax professionals by doing the reliable work consistently and by surfacing the items that need judgement — it is not intended to replace professional judgement where a legal position has to be interpreted. Where the facts do not support a safe conclusion, the intended behaviour is to say so and name the question, not to produce a number.
- Does it work with Tally?
- Embarc builds and maintains a TallyPrime connector that gives structured access to companies, masters, vouchers, outstanding items and standard reports. It has been verified against one TallyPrime version to date — TallyPrime Edit Log 1.1.7.1 — and other versions and editions are not yet tested. Writing back to your books is deliberately constrained and requires explicit approval.
- Is it available now?
- No. It is under active development and is not production software. We are not quoting a release date, because the remaining work includes correctness and legal-review items that should not be rushed to meet one.
- Can I take part in the pilot?
- We would like to hear from you, particularly if your organisation deals regularly with reverse charge, imported services or credit-timing questions. Early access is deliberately small: enough participants to test the reasoning against real complexity, few enough that we can work with each of them properly.
- Is anything on this page tax advice?
- No. This page describes software Embarc is building. It states no GST position, no rate and no entitlement, and nothing on it should be relied on as tax or legal advice.
Be among the first to see how GST reconciliation can work
Tell us where your GST complexity actually sits. If it is the kind of work this engine is being built for, we would like to hear from you early.
Or write to shailendra.bansal@embarc.co.in
Embarc Information Technology Pvt. Ltd. is a software engineering company. Nothing on this page is tax or legal advice, and nothing here describes certified or production-ready functionality. The GST engine described is under development; capabilities are stated as design intent and remain subject to verification and professional review.