Supply Type — your own words for local and central
Name the kinds of sale and purchase you actually make, and your exported files print your words instead of ours.
A supply type is your own name for a kind of sale or purchase, together with how GST should be worked out for it. Its main job today is a simple one: the Supply Type column in your exported sale and purchase files prints your name instead of ours. If you set none of this up, nothing changes anywhere — your files keep printing the standard wording, exactly as they do now.
Where it is
Masters · Supply Type. The page has two tabs, Sale types and Purchase types, and they are separate lists. A name you create on one tab does not exist on the other, and the same name may safely appear on both — a sale and a purchase never draw from each other’s list.
The three fields that matter
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | Exactly what your exported file will print. Whatever you type here is the word that appears in the Supply Type column. Use the word your own staff already say. |
| Where the supply goes | Which kind of supply this name stands for: Always local (CGST + SGST) or Always central (IGST). There is a third choice, Decide by state, and it is the one to avoid here — see the warning below. |
| Where the tax sits | How the GST is recorded on the bill: on the item lines, or in the bill sundries at the foot of the bill. Choose Whichever way only if you genuinely do not mind, because then one name has to cover both. |
“Decide by state” will never name anything
It is a perfectly good setting — it works the split out for each document by comparing your GST state with the party’s, and it is what every type that came with Kaalchakra uses. But because it does not stand for one answer, it can never be the word an export prints. If your exported file still shows the standard wording after you renamed a type, this is almost always why. Open the type and set Where the supply goes to Always local or Always central.
What Kaalchakra then does on its own
Once your types exist you do not pick one on every bill. For each document in an export, Kaalchakra works out two things from the document itself, then looks for the one type whose settings match both.
- 1
Is it local or central?
Taken from the tax treatment the document was saved with — and for older records brought over from another program, worked out from the document’s own tax amounts.
- 2
Where does its GST sit?
On the item lines, or in the bill sundries at the foot. Whichever the document actually uses.
- 3
Which of your types says both of those things?
That type’s name goes in the Supply Type column. If none of your types matches, the column prints the standard wording, exactly as before.
A name is only a name
Naming a supply type changes a label, never a figure. No tax amount, no tax head, no return and no ledger entry moves because you renamed something here. Your old documents are not edited either — the name is worked out as the file is written.
A worked example
A business whose purchases arrive in two different shapes — some with GST on each item line, some with the GST as separate charge rows at the foot of the bill — and which also buys from another state, might set up four purchase types and two sale types. The names below are illustrations only; yours should be the words your own staff use.
| Tab | Name (yours to choose) | Where the supply goes | Where the tax sits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sale types | *Local sale* | Always local | On the item lines |
| Sale types | *Outside the state* | Always central | On the item lines |
| Purchase types | *Local purchase* | Always local | On the item lines |
| Purchase types | *Local, tax at the foot* | Always local | In the bill sundries |
| Purchase types | *Outside the state* | Always central | On the item lines |
| Purchase types | *Outside the state, tax at the foot* | Always central | In the bill sundries |
Two types, one kind of supply
The two local purchase rows above differ only in Where the tax sits, and that is the point: it lets a bill whose GST is on the items and a bill whose GST is at the foot carry different words in your file, even though both are local purchases. If you only ever need one word for local purchases, make one type and set Where the tax sits to Whichever way.
Setting one up, step by step
- 1
Open Masters · Supply Type and choose the right tab
Sale types for sales, Purchase types for purchases. They are separate lists.
- 2
Press New type
Type the Name exactly as you want it to appear in your exported file.
- 3
Set Where the supply goes
Always local or Always central. Not Decide by state, which names nothing — the dialog says so beside the choice.
- 4
Set Where the tax sits
On the item lines, In the bill sundries, or Whichever way if one name should cover both.
- 5
Read the line that says what it will match
The dialog shows This type applies to: and a plain sentence. If that sentence is not what you meant, change a setting before saving.
- 6
Save, then export
Export a sale or purchase file and look at the Supply Type column. Your words should be there. Repeat for each kind of sale or purchase you want named.
When two of your types both fit
A type that names one way the tax is recorded always beats one that accepts either, so a precise type wins over a broad one. If two equally precise types still fit, the one you marked preferred wins; otherwise the one that sits higher in your list does. The page tells you which type names each column.
Wrong split on an invoice?
That is a different question from naming. Check three things in order: your organisation’s state on the profile page, the party’s state on their account, and the treatment recorded on the transaction itself. One of those three is almost always the culprit.
An older invoice keeps the treatment it was saved with
A sale or purchase that recorded its tax treatment when it was saved keeps that treatment. If a party later moves to another state, or gets a GST number they did not have before, going back and editing something small on such an invoice — a narration, a bill number — will not quietly move it between CGST + SGST and IGST, and Kaalchakra says so on screen when today’s details would have given a different answer. Two things to know. Older records brought in from another program often did not record a treatment, and those are still worked out afresh each time they are saved. And when an old invoice genuinely should change, re-pick the party, or set the supply type on the form yourself — on a computer that is Alt+G on the entry screen — either of which is treated as a deliberate decision and applied.
Supply types and imported spreadsheets
When importing transactions from a spreadsheet, a mapped Transaction Type / Sale Type / Purchase Type column applies the same logic: a matching type name is used as-is, and plain keywords like “IGST” or “Local” steer the tax split. See Importing your data.
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