GSTR-2B reconciliation
The process of matching the input tax credit reported by suppliers in their GSTR-1 (which auto-populates a recipient's GSTR-2B) against the recipient's purchase records, to ensure all eligible input credit is claimed and no ineligible credit is taken.
GSTR-2B is a static, system-generated input tax credit (ITC) statement issued monthly to each GST-registered taxpayer in India. It is built automatically from the sales (GSTR-1) filed by the taxpayer's suppliers, plus imports and reverse-charge entries. A taxpayer's claimable input credit for the month is bounded by what appears in 2B.
Reconciliation involves comparing every purchase invoice the taxpayer has booked against the line items in 2B. Invoices in books but missing from 2B mean the supplier has not yet filed GSTR-1 (or filed it incorrectly) — the credit is not claimable until that's corrected. Invoices in 2B but missing from books mean the supplier is reporting a transaction the taxpayer doesn't recognise — possibly a duplicate or a mistakenly addressed invoice.
GSTR-2B reconciliation is the single biggest month-end bottleneck for many Indian SMBs. Manual VLOOKUP across thousands of invoice rows is error-prone; supplier non-compliance (unfiled GSTR-1) silently delays credit recovery. Automated 2B reconciliation tools materially shorten the close cycle and improve credit-recovery rates.