📎 This article includes 1 downloadable practice file ↓
Most Busy problems I get asked about are not really software problems. They come from a company that was created in a hurry: wrong financial-year start, GSTIN typed in the wrong field, items without HSN codes, opening stock entered as a purchase. Six months later the GSTR-1 does not match the books and nobody remembers why.
In this article
Here is the order I use when setting up a new company in Busy. It takes about a week of part-time work for a small trading business, and it saves a lot of pain at the first return.
Day 1: create the company properly
- Financial year: 1 April for almost every Indian business. If you are starting mid-year, still use 1 April as the year start and enter opening balances as on your actual start date.
- Books commencing from: the day you actually began trading. Busy will not let you post before it.
- State: pick it carefully. Busy decides CGST+SGST versus IGST by comparing your state with the party’s state. A wrong state means every invoice has the wrong tax type.
- GSTIN and registration type: regular or composition. Composition dealers cannot charge GST on invoices, and Busy changes the invoice layout accordingly.
Day 2: configuration
Open Administration › Configuration › Features/Options and decide now:
- Whether you need multiple godowns (shop and warehouse, say).
- Whether you track batches or expiry (pharma, food) or serial numbers (electronics).
- Whether you want bill-by-bill tracking for parties. For any business that gives credit, turn this on. It is the only way to get a clean ageing report later.
Switching these on after thousands of vouchers is possible, but old entries will not have the details, and your reports will have a before-and-after break.
Day 3: account masters
Busy ships with the standard groups (Sundry Debtors, Sundry Creditors, Duties & Taxes and so on). Resist the urge to invent your own top-level groups. Make sub-groups instead, e.g. Sundry Debtors › Retail and Sundry Debtors › Distributors.
For every customer and supplier fill in:
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| GSTIN | Decides B2B vs B2C in GSTR-1. Missing GSTIN = your customer loses input credit. |
| State | Decides IGST vs CGST+SGST. |
| Credit days | Feeds the overdue reports. |
| PAN | Needed for TDS/TCS on large purchases and sales. |
If you have more than about 50 parties, import them from Excel rather than typing. Busy’s master import accepts a fixed column layout; download the template from the import screen, paste your list, and check the preview before accepting.
Day 4: item masters
This is where GST mistakes are born. Each item needs:
- HSN/SAC code — at least 4 digits for most turnover levels, 6 for larger businesses.
- Tax category — the GST rate. Create tax categories named by rate (GST 5%, GST 12%, GST 18%) instead of by product, so there are few to maintain.
- Unit — pick units that match the UQC list (NOS, KGS, MTR, BOX). Invoices with “pcs” or “pkt” create questions in e-invoicing.
Day 5: opening balances
Enter them from the closing trial balance of your old system or your CA’s balance sheet:
- Ledger opening balances (bank, cash, capital, loans).
- Party balances bill by bill — each unpaid invoice with its date, not one lump sum. Otherwise ageing is wrong from day one.
- Opening stock through item opening quantities and values, not as a purchase voucher. A purchase voucher would show up in GSTR-2B reconciliation as a bill that does not exist.
When done, the opening trial balance should balance to the rupee. If there is a difference, Busy parks it in “Difference in opening balance”. Chase it down now, not in March.
Day 6: first vouchers
Enter a handful of real transactions and look at the printed invoice before you hand one to a customer. Check that the invoice shows your GSTIN, the customer’s GSTIN and place of supply, HSN codes, and the tax split. Then enter one purchase, one payment and one receipt, adjusting against the bills.
Day 7: the reports to check
- GST summary / GSTR-1 preview: are B2B invoices showing under B2B? Any “uncategorised” entries?
- HSN summary: does every sold item have a code?
- Party ageing: do the opening bills appear with the right dates?
- Stock summary: does closing quantity match a physical count of a few items?
If all four look right after a week, the company is in good shape. From here the routine is simple: enter daily, reconcile bank weekly, and compare GSTR-2B against purchases every month before filing. For the Excel side of that reconciliation, see GST reconciliation in Excel.
📎 Practice files for this article
- 📗GST reconciliation practice workbookPurchase register vs GSTR-2B with planted problems (trailing spaces, a tax mismatch, a missing and an extra invoice), a ready Recon sheet and PASS/FAIL checks.⬇ XLSX · 12 KB
Free to use for learning. Files with macros (.bas) are plain text — import them with Alt+F11 → File → Import File, and always test on a copy.
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