GST · Service codes
SAC code finder
Every service supplied under GST has a Services Accounting Code. Which invoices have to show it depends on your turnover. Describe the work in your own words and Invoise matches it against the official GST service classification — the same dataset it fills invoices from.
Reading one code
Each rung is read against the one above it. Chapter 99 says the supply is a service; the pairs after it narrow that to one.
Definition
What a SAC code is
SAC stands for Services Accounting Code. GST classifies every supply — goods by an HSN code, services by a SAC code.
The code sits on the tax invoice beside the line it describes. It decides which GST rate applies. It feeds the HSN summary filed with your GSTR-1 return. And it tells anyone reading the invoice later exactly what was supplied.
Service codes all live in a single chapter, 99, and read from the outside in. The first two digits say the supply is a service. The next two name the family it belongs to. The last two name the service itself — the decoder above reads one of them out.
Comparison
SAC or HSN?
One invoice can carry both. The question is asked line by line, not business by business.
Goods · HSN
Harmonised System of Nomenclature
Codes for things: a product you sell, ship or hand over. They span the whole tariff, from live animals to machinery — 21,935 of them in the dataset Invoise imports.
Services · SAC
You’re on this oneServices Accounting Code
Codes for work: design, consulting, development, repair, transport, tuition. All of them begin 99, and there are 681 in the same dataset.
If a line bills for work performed rather than for an object supplied, that line takes a SAC code. A studio that designs a brand and also sells printed copies of the guidelines will carry one of each — the goods half is the HSN code finder.
On the invoice
Who needs one, and how many digits
Any GST-registered business raising a tax invoice for a service. How many digits that code carries depends on your aggregate turnover in the preceding financial year.
For a freelancer, consultant, designer or small studio that is every invoice — and the same code carries into the HSN summary when the return is filed.
The rule is Notification 78/2020 – Central Tax, in force from 1 April 2021: up to ₹5 crore, four digits are required on B2B invoices; above ₹5 crore, six digits on every tax invoice.
Inside Invoise
You shouldn’t have to look it up twice
This page searches one dataset. The invoice editor uses that dataset and the official rate table beside it, so a line you describe arrives classified, priced and split.
The code, without the search
Type the line the way you would say it aloud and the classification arrives with it — the same reviewed matches and fixed rules this page's lookup returns, so identical words always give an identical code.
On the line
SAC 998314
The rate, cited to its notification
The GST rate comes matched to the invoice’s own date, with the instrument it is read from named on the document. An old invoice keeps the rate that was in force when it was raised.
Read against
The rate table in force on the invoice’s date
The tax split, worked out
Bill inside your own state and one rate prints as two components; bill another state and it is a single integrated tax line. Read off your registration and your client’s, never typed.
Same state
CGST + SGST, each half the rate
The classification is not guessed. The editor searches the dataset this page searches and applies the same fixed rules, and the rate comes from the official table Invoise imports — never from a model asked to produce one.
Chapter 99
Where services sit
Every service code extends one of these headings. Find the family first, then search above for the exact code.
- 9954
- Construction services
- 9961
- Services in wholesale trade
- 9962
- Services in retail trade
- 9963
- Accommodation, food and beverage services
- 9964
- Passenger transport services
- 9965
- Goods Transport Services
- 9966
- Rental services of transport vehicles with operators
- 9967
- Supporting services in transport
- 9968
- Postal and courier services
- 9969
- Electricity, gas, water and other distribution services
- 9971
- Financial and related services
- 9972
- Real estate services
- 9973
- Leasing or rental services without operator
- 9981
- Research and development services
- 9982
- Legal and accounting services
- 9983
- Other professional, technical and business services
- 9984
- Telecommunications, broadcasting and information supply services
- 9985
- Support services
- 9986
- Support services to agriculture, hunting, forestry, fishing, mining and utilities
- 9987
- Maintenance, repair and installation (except construction) services
- 9988
- Manufacturing services on physical inputs (goods) owned by others
- 9989
- Other manufacturing services; publishing, printing and reproduction services; materials recovery services
- 9991
- Public administration and other services provided to the community as a whole; compulsory social security services
- 9992
- Education services
- 9993
- Human health and social care services
- 9994
- Sewage and waste collection, treatment and disposal and other environmental protection services
- 9995
- Services of membership organisations
- 9996
- Recreational, cultural and sporting services
- 9997
- Other services
- 9998
- Domestic services
- 9999
- Services provided by extraterritorial organisations and bodies
Headings only. The six-digit codes beneath them are what the search returns, drawn from the official GST classification Invoise imports from services.gst.gov.in.
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