IMS explained for shop owners: the new Accept/Reject you must do every month

IMS is a monthly checklist: for every invoice a supplier uploads with your GSTIN, you say Accept, Reject, or Pending — and what you accept becomes your ITC.

Until recently, your GSTR-2B was assembled from whatever suppliers filed, take it or leave it. The Invoice Management System hands you the remote control — and since the October 2025 tax period, using it is the mandatory basis for ITC (Section 38, as amended). New power, new chore.

The three buttons, in shop language

| Action | Means | Result | |---|---|---| | Accept | "Yes, I made this purchase, details are right" | Invoice flows into your GSTR-2B → credit available | | Reject | "This isn't my purchase / it's wrong" | Stays out of your 2B; the supplier sees the rejection | | Pending | "Real, but not ready to accept" | Parked; not in this month's 2B, decide later |

No action = deemed accepted when 2B generates on the 14th. That default is the trap: it feels like you can ignore IMS, but ignoring it means anything uploaded against your GSTIN — including a fraudster's fake invoice — walks into your credit. With ₹1.01 lakh crore of fake ITC via 42,000+ bogus firms detected in FY24-25, "unknown invoice → Reject" is a habit worth having.

Why Reject matters more than Accept

Accepting genuine invoices was going to happen anyway (deemed acceptance). The real power is Reject:

• An invoice from a supplier you've never heard of? Reject — you've just refused to be part of someone's fake-ITC chain.
• A duplicate upload? Reject the copy.
• Wrong amount? Reject and tell the supplier to re-report correctly (or accept and reconcile the difference — cleaner to fix at source).

And Pending protects you in the middle cases: goods in transit, quality disputes, "who is this invoice from?" investigations.

The 15-minute monthly routine

1. Open IMS between the 11th and 13th — after suppliers' GSTR-1 deadline (11th), before 2B generation (14th).
2. Match each invoice against your purchase bills. Known purchase, right details → Accept.
3. Unknown or wrong → Reject. Real but undelivered/disputed → Pending.
4. Recheck Pending items each month so credits don't quietly age past the claim deadline (30 November after the FY).
5. Done before the 14th, your GSTR-2B comes out already clean — reconciliation becomes a formality.

A worked example

Devi General Stores, November: IMS shows 31 invoices. 27 match purchase bills → Accept. 2 are from a firm Devi never bought from → Reject (and a note to check who's using her GSTIN — see fake supplier checks). 1 is a genuine order still on a truck → Pending, accepted in December. 1 shows ₹12,000 tax instead of ₹1,200 → Reject, supplier re-reports correctly next month. Devi's 2B that month contains exactly her real, correct purchases — nothing to untangle at filing time.

Where GST Sathe fits

Matching 31 invoices against a drawer of bills is exactly the robotic work software should do. GST Sathe reads your IMS queue, matches each invoice to your captured bills, and pre-suggests the action — Accept (matched), Reject (unknown/duplicate/wrong), Pending (no goods receipt yet) — so your monthly IMS session is a two-minute review, not a spreadsheet hunt. See the IMS feature →

Sources

• Section 38, CGST Act (as amended); GSTN IMS advisories (facility live Oct 2024; mandatory basis for ITC from the Oct 2025 tax period)
• Rule 60 (GSTR-2B generation); FY24-25 fake ITC figures, DGGI/CBIC