As we have started receiving queries regarding GSTR 1 and requirement of data in excel with HSN, tax rate wise sales amount for each invoice. You have been thinking that since guidance from tax consultant is required and he would charge anyway, so why not give data to him and file returns through him. We fully agree to your viewpoint. 

Now the real story, you need to interact with GSTN for filing returns minimum six times in a month and in time bound manner. Like Upto 10th upload sales, 11-13th Purchase Mismatch, 13-15th upload GSTR 2A then on 16-17th upload R1A and then check tax amount on 18th, deposit the same and file GSTR 3 by 20th. Since you need to give data in time bound manner upto 10th, get feedback for purchase mismatch upto 13th and then give discrepancies data upto 15th. Then you may get discrepancies in R1 data and you have to provide R1A sales data again. Getting excel sheets on email/pen drive and matching them with software data and trying to find out discrepancies, all this involves a lot of manual work and you may be thinking that you will ask your software vendor to do all this work for you, after all what AMC is paid for?

So please note that there is no support available at our end for matching excel sheets and providing feedback to Tax consultant. You might be thinking and would have been told that R2 will simply come from your suppliers and all those are big companies, so everything will be just okay, no need to worry. Please note that you will be getting tax invoice from retailers for expiry returns and it would involve lot of transactions and mismatch of data. Even with integrated software it is going to be a complicated job to keep track of ITC, forget how much the tax consultant will be able to handle. Just remember that you are only one of many clients for him and ONLY YOU can take care of your data properly because it's YOUR BUSINESS & YOUR

MONEY. 

As GST has changed everything, you have to learn new business style and survive in GST era. This is not the money to be spent for Karvy or another GSP, as this money is just 500/- per month and your tax consultant would be increasing his fees in any case due to increased workload and interaction requirements between you and him. So even if you choose to not to pay Karvy or another GSP, you may end up spending more money and time in the process and more dissatisfaction would be there. 

All top pharma software vendors could foresee this scenario and we had a meeting in Delhi on 17-18 June with top 6 GSP for integration to be designed in software to ease the GST process for you. Karvy was selected as first choice based on merit, reputation and experience of the company, user interface of web site and API readiness.  So integration is provided for Karvy by all top pharma software vendors in the software.  Everybody was quoting high charges as the volume of invoices is high in pharmaceutical trade, so we negotiated best to achieve an optimum solution for you. Now you are free to register with Karvy or another GSP to file your GST returns. Even tax consultant is going to use some software for this purpose, he cannot spend time to login to GSTN and do it himself.  Purchase mismatch is not handled by GSTN. 

On GSP Karvy website, you can create a login for tax consultant, so that he can check the data before filing and file GST return on your behalf using GSP site, if so desired.  Please visit asp.swindia.com to register with Karvy. 

Or you can visit gsp.swindia.com to register with another GSP. 

Hope it helps to make you proper decision. 

PS: Unfortunately, GSP like Karvy could not provide filing of GST R1, R2 or 3B due to API not being made available to them. We have provided excel export option for GST R1 which can be imported and uploaded to GSTN using offline tool. We had put this option at third priority earlier but now it has come out to be first priority option for clients. You need to pay charges - excel export to offline tool for using this option.