Guide to Download GSTR 2A in Excel

GSTR-2A reflects all the purchases made by a taxpayer during a particular period, as filed by its suppliers. The details appearing in GSTR-2A are auto-populated from the GSTR-1 filed by all the suppliers of a taxpayer. Currently, a taxpayer can download GSTR-2A month-wise only.
 

The GST registered businesses must reconcile GSTR-2A and the purchase data to claim the maximum eligible Input Tax Credit (ITC). A taxpayer has to reconcile the downloaded GSTR-2A data with their purchase data manually, which is time-consuming. Instead, using a recon software or tool will make this task easier. 
 

Step-by-step process to download GSTR-2A in excel format 

Step 1: Log in to the GST portal with your username and password.

Step 2: After logging, select ‘Returns Dashboard’ as shown below.

Step 3: Select the month & financial year for which you want to download GSTR-2A in excel. Click on the ‘Download’ tab appearing in the ‘Auto Drafted details’ box.
 

Step 4: On the screen that appears, click on the button- ‘Generate excel file to download’ to download the file in excel format. 
 

Alternatively, click on the button “Generate JSON file to download” to download the file in JSON format. Once you select this option, the portal will take around 20 mins to process your request for GSTR-2A in excel.

Step 5: Once processed, you will see a link ‘Click here to download Excel – File 1’ right below the button ‘Generate excel file to download’. Click on this to download the file.

Step 6: The requested file will be downloaded from the portal in a zipped folder. Make sure that your system has .rar,.zip software to unzip the file. Lastly, unzip the excel file to use GSTR-2A data.
 

How does Clear help?

Clear GST software comes with an inbuilt feature of advanced reconciliation, enabling you to download GSTR-2A data across different months or for an entire year in a single click. It has the intelligence to auto-identify matches between purchase registers and GSTR-2A to suggest matches. You can define your own customer matching rules and error tolerance to identify ‘invoice match’. Also, you can eliminate filing errors and save your money with our GST platform that is 3x faster and detects 100% ITC with AI-powered reconciliations.
 

Related Articles

GSTR 2A : Details, Return Filing, Format

Matching & Reconciliation under GST – Importance & Procedure

Guide to reconcile GSTR 2A and Purchase data using ClearTax Advanced Recon tool

Comparison of GSTR-3B vs GSTR-2A : Importance & Report