GST · Export invoices

Export invoice format

An Indian freelancer or studio billing a client abroad raises a tax invoice like any other — and then adds a handful of things a domestic invoice never carries. Here is one, filled in, with every export-specific field named and the rule it answers to.

Rules cited · s.2(6), s.13, s.16 IGST · r.34, r.46, r.96A CGSTRendered by Invoise’s Classic template

New to this? Three words you’ll see below

GSTIN: Your fifteen-character GST registration number. It goes on every invoice you raise.
SAC code: The official code for the kind of work you did. Services are classified in chapter 99 of the GST classification.
Zero-rated: Section 16 of the IGST Act makes an export of services a zero-rated supply: either no integrated tax is charged, or it is charged and refunded.

The document

One export invoice, filled in

Rendered by Invoise’s Classic template from a snapshot shaped exactly as finalization freezes one — the product’s own renderer, not a picture of it. The business, the client and the figures are invented.

Reading the paper

Each claim below names something visible on the invoice beside it, and the rule it answers to. Scroll, and they take the document in order.

Export under LUT

The treatment. Zero-rated, so no integrated tax is charged and the totals carry a taxable value and nothing else.

Section 16 · IGST Act

No GSTIN for the buyer

An overseas client is not registered in India. Their foreign tax ID prints where a GSTIN would.

United States

The country of destination, which rule 46’s export proviso asks for by name.

Rule 46 proviso · CGST Rules

USD

The currency the client is billed in and pays in.

FX rate, source and date

Three fields of their own, so the rupee figure below them can be checked rather than taken on trust.

Rule 34 · CGST Rules

≈ INR equivalent

Frozen onto the invoice when it is finalized. Reporting reads this figure for a foreign-currency document.

The endorsement

The wording rule 46 prescribes, in full, under the totals.

Rule 46 proviso · CGST Rules

Copy the structure — or stop copying structures.Every field named above is one Invoise fills from your business, your client and your lines.

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Export Invoice

HBL/EXP/26-27/018

FromHarbourline StudioHarbourline Studio LLP3rd Floor, Ashirvad BuildingBazaar Road, MattancherryKochi, Kerala 682002IndiaGSTIN 32ABGFH7392K1Z0billing@harbourline.studio

Bill toHalcyon BioworksHalcyon Bioworks, Inc.2100 Kettner BoulevardSuite 300San Diego, CA 92101United StatesTax ID 87-3149205ap@halcyonbioworks.com

Issue date14 Aug 2026

Payment terms13 Sept 2026

PO numberHB-PO-2216

CurrencyUSD

FX rate (to INR)87.15

FX sourceRBI reference rate

FX date14 Aug 2026

Description	HSN/SAC	Qty · Unit	Rate	Amount
Clinical data platform — discovery and designResearch synthesis, information architecture and the interface system	998314	1 project	$9,800.00	$9,800
Launch identity and campaign artworkWordmark refinement, launch site art direction and the ad set	998391	1 project	$3,600.00	$3,600

Subtotal$13,400

Total (USD)

$13,400

≈ INR equivalent₹11,67,810

Export under LUT — zero-rated.

Invoice note

SUPPLY MEANT FOR EXPORT/SUPPLY TO SEZ UNIT OR SEZ DEVELOPER FOR AUTHORISED OPERATIONS UNDER BOND OR LETTER OF UNDERTAKING WITHOUT PAYMENT OF INTEGRATED TAX

Footer

Payment in US dollars by wire transfer.

The decision

LUT (Letter of Undertaking) or IGST?

Both are zero-rated supplies under section 16 of the IGST Act. What differs is whether integrated tax appears on the invoice at all.

Route one · no tax charged

Shown on the invoice above

Export under LUT

You furnish a Letter of Undertaking in Form GST RFD-11 before exporting, then raise invoices with no integrated tax on them. Input tax credit stays claimable, and unutilised credit can be refunded.

Nothing is charged, so nothing has to be recovered. The tax column is empty and the total the client pays is the taxable value.

Endorsement on the invoice

SUPPLY MEANT FOR EXPORT/SUPPLY TO SEZ UNIT OR SEZ DEVELOPER FOR AUTHORISED OPERATIONS UNDER BOND OR LETTER OF UNDERTAKING WITHOUT PAYMENT OF INTEGRATED TAX

Route two · tax charged, then refunded

Export with IGST

You charge integrated tax on the export invoice, pay it, and claim a refund of the tax paid. No Letter of Undertaking is needed.

The client is invoiced for tax they have no reason to bear, or you absorb it — and the money sits with the department until the refund is processed.

Endorsement on the invoice

SUPPLY MEANT FOR EXPORT/SUPPLY TO SEZ UNIT OR SEZ DEVELOPER FOR AUTHORISED OPERATIONS ON PAYMENT OF INTEGRATED TAX

The choice is made before the invoice, not on it. To export without paying tax you must already have furnished a Letter of Undertaking in Form GST RFD-11. Rule 96A of the CGST Rules then attaches one condition: for services, the payment must reach you in convertible foreign exchange within one year of the invoice date, or within a longer period the Commissioner allows. If it does not, the tax falls due — with interest — within fifteen days of that year expiring.

In Invoise this is a tax treatment on the document, named exactly as above: Export under LUT, or Export with IGST. Picking one decides whether integrated tax is computed for the lines at all. The endorsement itself goes in the invoice note, where it prints beneath the totals — as it does on the sample above.

Place of supply

The field that decides whether it is an export at all

Get this wrong and it is not one line of the invoice that changes. It is whether the supply was zero-rated.

Section 2(6) of the IGST Act sets five conditions for a supply of services to count as an export. All five have to hold: fail one and the supply is a domestic one.

Supplier in India: The supplier of the service is located in India.
Recipient outside India: The recipient of the service is located outside India.
Place of supply outside India: Section 13 of the IGST Act decides where that is.
Paid in convertible foreign exchange: Or in rupees, where the Reserve Bank of India permits it.
Two separate persons: The supplier and the recipient are not merely establishments of one distinct person — not two offices of the same entity.

Section 13(2) gives the general rule for where the place of supply is when one side sits outside India: the location of the recipient, or, where that is not available in the ordinary course of business, the location of the supplier. Sub-sections (3) to (13) name specific services that land somewhere else.

Which is why the country line is not decoration

The recipient’s country is what the place of supply is read off, and it is why rule 46’s export proviso asks for the name of the country of destination alongside the recipient’s name and address. If your particular service falls under one of section 13’s carve-outs and its place of supply lands inside India, the supply is not an export: it is a domestic one, and the invoice is a domestic invoice.

Invoise suggests a treatment from the two parties’ countries and lets you change it. It does not decide a carve-out for you, and this page is not advice on your particular supply.

Currency

Billed in dollars, valued in rupees

The client pays in their currency. The value GST is computed on is a rupee value. The invoice is where the two are reconciled.

Rule 34 of the CGST Rules sets the conversion. For services it is the rate of exchange determined as per generally accepted accounting principles for the date of the time of supply; goods take the other sub-rule, the rate notified by the Board under section 14 of the Customs Act.

Rule 46 does not list a rupee column among an invoice’s particulars. But the value the tax is computed on is a rupee value and returns are filed in rupees, so the figure has to exist. Printing it on the paper beside the rate it was converted at is what makes it checkable.

What Invoise does with it

Pick a currency other than the rupee and three fields appear on the document: the exchange rate, its source and its date. You enter them — Invoise does not fetch a rate on your behalf — and the Classic template prints all three as their own rows, so the conversion travels with the invoice.

Finalizing freezes the rupee equivalent onto the document, and reporting reads that frozen figure for a foreign-currency invoice rather than a rate looked up later. The rupee total on the paper and the rupee total in the books are the same number.

Inside Invoise

Invoise fills all of this in for you

You can copy the layout above in an afternoon. But you would redo these three jobs on every invoice for the rest of the year — so Invoise does them instead.

You don’t look up the code

Type the work the way you’d say it out loud. The official service code arrives with it, and the GST rate that goes with that code on this invoice’s date.

On the sample’s first line

SAC 998314

You don’t do the currency maths

Bill in dollars and the exchange rate, where it came from and its date become fields on the invoice. The rupee figure is worked out and frozen when you finalize it.

On the sample’s paper

1 USD = ₹87.15

You don’t retype the legal wording

The sentence the rules require at the bottom of an export invoice is printed in full, word for word, in the right place. Getting it slightly wrong is easy — the wording is prescribed, character for character.

Printed in full

…PAYMENT OF INTEGRATED TAX

Rule 46

What an export invoice carries

The particulars every tax invoice owes, plus the three the export proviso adds on top — marked.

Supplier’s name, address and GSTIN: Yours. One business carries one seller GSTIN.
Invoice number: A consecutive serial of at most sixteen characters, unique for the financial year.
Date of issue: The date the invoice is raised.
Recipient’s name and address: The overseas client. There is no GSTIN to state — they are not registered in India.
Name of the country of destinationExport proviso: Added by the export proviso, and the fact the place of supply is read off.
Address of deliveryExport proviso: Also added by the export proviso, alongside the recipient’s address.
Description of the service: What was actually supplied, line by line.
SAC code: Services are classified in chapter 99 of the GST classification.
Taxable value: The value of the supply after any discount.
Rate and amount of tax: Nothing under a Letter of Undertaking; integrated tax at the applicable rate on the refund route.
Place of supply: Stated with the name of the State for an inter-State supply. On an export of services it lies outside India.
Whether tax is payable on reverse charge: A field on every tax invoice, export or not.
Signature of the supplier or an authorised representative: Handwritten or digital.
The export endorsementExport proviso: One of the two wordings above, printed in full.

Invoise fills the supplier block, the numbering, the dates and the tax columns from your business and your lines. The SAC code comes from the same official classification the SAC code finder searches.

Billing in India instead?Freelancer invoice formatThe domestic document: both GSTINs, the place of supply and the CGST/SGST split.

Need the code first?SAC code finderDescribe the work and get matching codes from the official service classification.

Selling goods too?HSN code finderThe goods half of the same dataset — 21,935 codes across the tariff.

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