Accept, Reject or Pending? A decision for every invoice

Every record in your IMS needs a verdict before the monthly cut-off, and each verdict is a small ITC decision with a cost attached. This is the practical framework: what each action means, when to use it, and how to apply it across hundreds of vendors without letting a wrong line slip into your GSTR-2B.

Decide against your books, not the invoice alone

The mistake teams make is treating IMS as a standalone inbox — reading each supplier record on its own and clicking Accept because it "looks fine." An IMS record is only as trustworthy as its match to your data. The correct unit of decision is the three-way tie: the supplier's IMS record, your purchase register / Zoho Books entry, and the physical tax invoice you actually hold. Only when those three agree on GSTIN, invoice number, taxable value, tax amount and tax period is an Accept safe.

That is why this is fundamentally a reconciliation problem, not a clicking problem. The button is the last step; the match is the work.

When to Accept

Accept a record into your GSTR-2B when all of the following hold:

• The GSTIN, invoice number, value, tax and period match your books and the invoice you hold.
• The supply is a genuine business input, not on the blocked-credit list in Section 17(5) of the CGST Act (e.g. most motor vehicles, personal consumption, works-contract for immovable property).
• You have received the goods or services (Section 16(2)(b)).

Accepted records become eligible input tax credit under Section 16, communicated through your 2B per Section 16(2)(aa). This is your default action for the clean majority of records — but "default" should still mean "matched," not "assumed."

When to Reject

Reject the record — excluding it from your 2B — whenever it should not be your credit:

A Reject is not a permanent verdict on the relationship — if the supplier corrects and re-reports the document, it returns to IMS for a fresh decision. Reject is simply how you keep bad data out of the statutory statement that fixes your credit.

When to keep Pending

Pending defers the decision to a later tax period. Use it sparingly and deliberately:

• Goods or services not yet received. ITC can't be taken until receipt (Section 16(2)(b)), so parking the record until delivery keeps your 2B honest.
• Value under active query. You and the supplier disagree on the amount and it's being resolved — don't accept a figure you dispute, don't reject a genuine supply.
• Documentation pending. You're waiting on the physical invoice or supporting paperwork.

The one action you must never take: nothing

If you leave a record untouched, it is deemed accepted and flows into your 2B automatically. The 14th is when your draft 2B is generated — you can still act on records after it, right up to the moment you file GSTR-3B, but any post-14th action forces a GSTR-2B recompute before filing, and deemed acceptance only becomes final when you file the 3B. Treat the 14th as your practical deadline, not the legal one. This is the default that costs money. An overstated or duplicate invoice you simply didn't get to becomes credit sitting in your 2B — and once you utilise it, it is wrongly-availed input tax credit, recoverable with 18% interest (Section 50(3) read with Rule 88B) and open to demand under Section 74A (FY 2024-25 onwards; Section 73/74 for earlier periods). (That is distinct from a DRC-01C intimation under Rule 88D (Notification 38/2023-Central Tax, 4 August 2023), which fires the opposite way — when the ITC you claim in GSTR-3B exceeds what your 2B contains beyond the portal's threshold, a figure GSTN has never published.) "I ran out of time" is, in the eyes of the system, an Accept.

Doing this at scale

The framework above is simple for ten invoices. The problem is that a mid-sized business sees thousands of IMS records a month across multiple GSTINs, and each one needs the three-way match before it can be actioned. Done by hand that means exporting IMS, exporting your purchase register, VLOOKUP-ing them together, eyeballing the differences, and clicking through the portal line by line — every month, against the clock, before the 14th. It is painful to do manually, and the failure mode isn't dramatic: it's the twenty lines you didn't reach, quietly deemed accepted.

Build a repeatable monthly routine

The teams that stay out of trouble don't decide records ad hoc — they run the same sequence every period:

1. Snapshot early. Pull IMS and your purchase register on the same day, well before the 14th, so you're comparing like for like.
2. Auto-match the obvious. The clean three-way matches — GSTIN, number, value, tax, period all agreeing — are the large majority. Clear them first so the exceptions stand out.
3. Work the exceptions by type. Group the residue: duplicates and wrong-GSTIN records to Reject, value mismatches to query, not-yet-received to Pending, and — crucially — records in your books with no IMS match, which mean a supplier hasn't filed.
4. Chase before the cut-off. A missing supplier record is a call today; after the 14th it's next period's credit at best.
5. Sweep for untouched lines. Before the 14th, confirm nothing is left unactioned — every remaining record will be deemed accepted whether you meant it or not.

The routine is simple. Executing it by hand across thousands of records and several GSTINs, every month, on a deadline, is not — which is where the failures creep in.

How Recoup makes the decision for you

Recoup reconciles every IMS record against your Zoho Books ledgers and the invoice on file, then hands you a pre-sorted verdict on each line: safe to Accept, should be Rejected (and why — wrong GSTIN, duplicate, amount mismatch), or genuinely Pending. The records that are in your books but missing from IMS — the ones no button can fix — are surfaced with the exact vendor named, so you chase the right supplier before the cut-off. It tracks the Rule 37 180-day clock on everything you accept and flags ineligible ITC under Section 17(5) before it reaches your 2B. You review exceptions, not thousands of lines.

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