57th GST Council: What Your ERP and Billing Must Change

In short: The 57th GST Council met in New Delhi on 8 October 2026 and recommended wider e-invoicing, new return correction statements from the April 2027 return, faster refunds and simpler registration. These are recommendations, not law yet. Finance and IT teams should start listing the changes their ERP and billing software will need.

If your accounts team spends the first week of every month matching GSTR-1, GSTR-3B and GSTR-2B by hand, the latest GST Council meeting matters to you. Several of its recommendations change what billing and ERP software must capture. Businesses that wait for the final notifications before speaking to their software vendor may be left with very little time to test.

What Happened

The 57th meeting of the GST Council was held in New Delhi on 8 October 2026, chaired by the Union Finance Minister, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman. The Ministry of Finance published the recommendations the same evening through the Press Information Bureau release. Business Standard carried a summary of the key decisions on 9 October 2026.

One point needs to be clear from the start. According to the PIB release, these are recommendations of the Council. They take effect only when they are given effect through circulars, notifications or amendments to the law. Most items do not have an effective date yet.

The Recommendations That Touch Your Software

The table lists only the items likely to need changes in billing, ERP or accounting systems, as described in the PIB release.

Area	What the Council recommended	Timing stated	Likely system impact
E-invoicing	Extend e-invoicing to domestic supplies received from unregistered persons where tax is payable under reverse charge, and to import of services, for taxpayers with aggregate annual turnover of ₹5 crore or more	No date given	Purchase and expense entries under reverse charge may need e-invoice generation, not only sales invoices
Returns	Better reconciliation between GSTR-1/1A/IFF and GSTR-3B, with mechanisms to correct liability and ITC in GSTR-3B, plus new electronic statements for reverse charge tax and for credit reversal and reclaim	Alternate amendment mechanism from the April 2027 return, after public consultation	Return preparation and reconciliation reports will need new fields and checks
Invoice Management System	Recipients can accept, reject or keep pending inward supply documents for GSTR-2B, subject to conditions	No date given	Purchase invoice matching needs a clear status for each document
Refunds	90% of zero-rated and inverted duty refund claims to be sanctioned provisionally through system risk assessment, with refund data captured in a system-readable format	Phased, no date given	Exporters need clean, structured invoice and shipping data
ITC refunds	Inverted duty refunds to include input services ITC availed on or after 1 November 2026. Capital goods ITC refunds spread over 60 months for ITC availed on or after 1 April 2027	Dates as stated	ITC must be tagged correctly as inputs, input services or capital goods
Registration	Most amendments to registration details to be accepted automatically. Small suppliers selling through e-commerce operators may declare the operator's warehouse as principal place of business, subject to conditions	No date given	Master data such as addresses and GSTINs must stay accurate

Who Is Affected

• Businesses with turnover of ₹5 crore or more that pay GST under reverse charge on purchases from unregistered suppliers, or that import services such as software subscriptions or foreign consultancy.
• Every regular taxpayer that files GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, because the return correction mechanism is planned from the April 2027 return.
• Exporters and businesses with inverted duty structures that claim refunds.
• Sellers on e-commerce marketplaces that store goods in an operator's warehouse in other states.

What It Means for an Indian Business

Today, many systems treat e-invoicing as a sales-side job. If the reverse charge recommendation is notified as described, the purchase side will also need to produce e-invoices for certain transactions. That means your system must identify reverse charge purchases and imports of services at the time of entry, not at month end.

The return changes point the same way. The portal is being built to compare what you report in different returns and to ask for corrections where they do not match. For background on how the current e-invoice flow works, see our guide to GST e-invoicing integration with your ERP.

Because the final rules and dates are not yet notified, nobody can say exactly which screens or reports must change. What you can do now is find the weak spots.

What to Do Now

1. Read the official release. Ask your finance head and tax adviser to go through the PIB release of 8 October 2026 and mark the items that apply to your business.
2. List your reverse charge and import of services transactions. Pull the last six months of purchases from unregistered suppliers and payments for foreign services, and note how they are recorded today.
3. Check how your system tags ITC. Confirm that each purchase is marked as inputs, input services or capital goods, since the refund recommendations depend on this split.
4. Measure your return mismatches. Compare GSTR-1, GSTR-3B and GSTR-2B for recent months and record where differences come from, such as late entries, credit notes or manual adjustments.
5. Write to your ERP or billing software vendor. Ask how and when they plan to support the changes once notified, and whether updates are covered under your support contract.
6. Watch for notifications and the public consultation. Follow the CBIC and GST portal updates, and have your adviser confirm the final rules before you change any process.

This article is a summary for planning, not tax or legal advice. Please confirm how each recommendation applies to you with your chartered accountant or tax adviser.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are the 57th GST Council decisions already in force?

No. The PIB release dated 8 October 2026 describes them as recommendations that take effect only through circulars, notifications or law amendments. A few items mention dates, such as the return correction mechanism from the April 2027 return. Most have no date yet.

Will e-invoicing now apply to purchases?

The Council recommended extending e-invoicing to reverse charge supplies received from unregistered persons and to import of services, for taxpayers with turnover of ₹5 crore or more. It becomes mandatory only after it is notified. The release does not give a start date.

Do we need to change our ERP right now?

Not yet. The detailed rules are still to come. It is sensible to review how your system records reverse charge purchases, ITC categories and return data now, so that changes can be made and tested quickly once the notifications are issued.

How Affix Center Can Help

Affix Center is an IT and e-governance solutions company based in Mumbai. We build and support ERP and business software, and our product engineering team handles integrations with GST systems, as explained in our guide to API integration for ERP, CRM and payments. We can review how your current software records GST data and list the changes to plan for.

To discuss a review of your ERP or billing system, contact our team.