Compliance with ‘Bill to’ and ‘Ship to’ in Eway Bill

A normal practice in the industry prevails where goods are sold to one person but delivered to a different location. This delivery address is different from the registered office address of the buyer.

This difference in ‘Bill To’ and ‘Ship To’ addresses must be dealt with carefully while issuing an invoice and generating E-way bill.

Latest Update

29th August 2021
From 1st May 2021 to 18th August 2021, the taxpayers will not face blocking of e-way bills for non-filing of GSTR-1 or GSTR-3B (two months or more for monthly filer and one quarter or more for QRMP taxpayers) for March 2021 to May 2021.

4th August 2021
Blocking of e-way bills due to non-filing of GSTR-3B resumes from 15th August 2021.

1st June 2021
1. The e-way bill portal, in its release notes, has clarified that a suspended GSTIN cannot generate an e-way bill. However, a suspended GSTIN as a recipient or as a transporter can get a generated e-way bill. 
2. the mode of transport ‘Ship’ has now been updated to ‘Ship/Road cum Ship’ so that the user can enter a vehicle number where goods are initially moved by road and a bill of lading number and date for movement by ship. This will help in availing the ODC benefits for movement using ships and facilitate the updating of vehicle details as and when moved on road. 

18th May 2021
The CBIC in Notification 15/2021-Central Tax has notified that the blocking of GSTINs for e-Way Bill generation is now considered only for the defaulting supplier’s GSTIN and not for the defaulting recipient or the transporter’s GSTIN. 
 

Bill To and Ship To under Eway Bill

Under “Bill To Ship To” model of supply, there are three persons involved in a transaction:

• ‘A’ is the person who has ordered ‘B’ to send goods directly to ‘C’
• ‘B’ is the person who is sending goods directly to ‘C’ on behalf of ‘A’
• ‘C’ is the recipient of goods

Here two supplies are involved and two tax invoices are required to be issued:   
 

• Invoice -1, which would be issued by ‘B’ to ‘A’   
• Invoice -2 which would be issued by ‘A’ to ‘C’

Case -1: Where e-Way Bill is generated by ‘B’

The following fields shall be filled in Part A of GST FORM EWB-01:

Case -2: Where e-Way Bill is generated by ‘A’

The following fields shall be filled in Part A of GST FORM EWB-01:

Delivery at a different place

There are certain circumstances under which the goods being transferred are sent to a location other than the location of the purchaser (registered address). Below are some examples of peculiar circumstances where a buyer may ask for delivery at a different location or to a third party:

• Buyer requires delivery at one of his warehouses which is at a location other than his registered office.
• Buyer (trading business) requires delivery of goods directly to one of his customer’s locations (third party).
• Buyer requires delivery of goods to a specially designed storage facility (cold storage, customs warehouse, etc.)
• Buyer requires delivery of goods to an institutional customer to whom he has already sold the goods further who is at a different location.
• Buyer’s customer is a retail chain and requires delivery of goods to various outlets.

Under all the above-stated circumstances, the ‘Bill to’ and ‘Ship to’ address as in the GST invoice shall be different. As the customer buying the goods has his billing address at his registered office address whereas the goods are shipped to a different address. 
 

This address is required while generating the Eway Bill for transfer of goods. While generating the Eway bill, the person should clearly mention the GSTIN of the buyer and the delivery location. The delivery location mentioned there shall be the actual delivery location where the goods are to be delivered and not the billing location (in case the delivery location is different from the billing address).

Responsibility to generate Eway Bill

Scenario 1

In this scenario, although the ‘Bill to’ and ‘Ship to’ addresses are different, the delivery is made necessary to the same person i.e with the same GSTIN. For example, this can happen where a buyer requests delivery of goods to one of his warehouses or storage facilities. It is nothing but a case of simply moving the goods to an additional place of business instead of the primary place of business by the buyer directly from the supplier.

Scenario 2

In this scenario, the ‘Bill to’ and ‘Ship to’ addresses are different and delivery is made to a different person i.e with a different GSTIN. For example, this can happen in a case where the goods are transferred directly to the buyer’s customer (third party) from the supplier’s location.

Case Studies

Case 1 (Scenario 1)

Ashish is a shoe dealer with a registered office in Mumbai. In view of the size of his operations, he has multiple warehousing facilities in different parts of Maharashtra for facilitating effective supply-chain management. He bought 2,000 pairs of shoes from Black Soles Pvt. Ltd. in Nasik for further sale. 
 

On purchase, he requested the supplier to ship the consignment to one of his warehouses at Pune. In this case, the goods are although ‘Billed to’ Ashish’s Mumbai office address, they are ‘Shipped to’ his warehouse in Pune. The GST invoice shall clearly show the two different addresses as ‘Bill to’ and ‘Ship to’ addresses. The transporter shall carry the Eway Bill during transit.

Case 1 (Scenario 2)

What happens if in the above case, instead of requesting to transfer the goods to his warehouses, Ashish requests Black Soles Pvt. Ltd. to send the shoes to one of his wholesale customers Vijay in Pune. 
 

In this case, as we understand that the GSTIN is different for both the parties, the Eway Bill requirements do not differ from the case above. Only one eway bill has to be generated. It can be generated by either Black Soles Pvt. Ltd. or Vijay in Pune for transfer of shoes Vijay (Mumbai to Pune).

Conclusion

To conclude, it is fair to mention that for transfer of goods to a different location of the same buyer, only one Eway Bill is required to be generated. In case the addresses differ along with the registered persons buying the goods and taking delivery of the same, two Eway Bill are required to be generated. 
 

The requirement to generate two Eway Bill has also been brought keeping in view instances where the delivery location is in a state different from the buyer’s state. This has been done to complete the cycle of transactions and taxes will change for inter-state transactions.