Zoho Books
in Kannur

The Accounting Challenge

A handloom cooperative in Kannur was exporting woven fabrics to buyers in Germany and the UK under LUT and also selling to domestic retail distributors in Delhi and Bengaluru. Export invoices were raised in Word documents and domestic invoices in Tally. Every export invoice needed to show the LUT reference number and be raised as zero-rated — requirements the accounts staff occasionally missed, triggering GST department correspondence asking why GST was not charged on certain invoices. Input credit on yarn and dye purchased from registered suppliers was tracked manually in Excel and always two months behind.

What Changed

We implemented Zoho Books as the single system with export buyers configured as LUT zero-rated and domestic buyers by state for automatic IGST treatment. LUT reference number was added as a custom field on all export invoice templates. Yarn and dye supplier bills were entered in Books from the first day with input credit tracked automatically. Bank feeds from their cooperative bank account were connected for reconciliation. The accounts manager was trained on Books in two days and moved the full billing process into the system within one week.

• check_circleGST department LUT compliance queries stopped after implementation
• check_circleInput credit tracking became real-time — yarn and dye purchase credit reflected immediately on GSTR-3B
• check_circleExport and domestic invoicing unified into one system — no more parallel Word and Tally workflow
• check_circleQuarterly filing time from four days to one day — all data in Books, nothing to consolidate