GST Billing Software for Restaurants: What to Check For

GST billing software for restaurants is any billing system that applies the right tax rate to an order, prints CGST and SGST correctly, and produces an invoice your GST filing can use, whether that's a tax invoice or a Bill of Supply. Most vendor pages stop at "we handle GST" and call it done. That single line hides what breaks in practice: which rate is yours, what a composition dealer's bill looks like, who invoices a Zomato order, and what happens to your invoice numbering the night your internet drops.

Key takeaways

• Most standalone restaurants charge a flat 5% GST with no input tax credit. Only restaurants inside a hotel charging Rs 7,500 or more a night switch to 18% with ITC.
• Composition-scheme restaurants (turnover up to Rs 1.5 crore, no liquor) can't issue a tax invoice at all, so your billing software needs to print a Bill of Supply instead.
• On most Zomato and Swiggy orders, the platform, not you, is legally on the hook for the GST invoice under Section 9(5) of the CGST Act.
• Offline billing is where GST compliant billing software quietly breaks: invoice numbers can't repeat or skip, even across terminals or a dead connection.
• Pricing ranges from free tools with hidden transaction fees to flat-fee SaaS at a few hundred rupees a month to enterprise contracts running into lakhs a year.

What GST rate should your restaurant billing software charge?

Standalone restaurants, dine-in, takeaway, or cloud kitchen, AC or not, pay a flat 5% GST with no input tax credit. Only restaurants inside a hotel charging Rs 7,500 or more per room per night move to 18%, and only they can claim ITC, according to Razorpay's breakdown of restaurant GST rates.

That AC-versus-non-AC split you might remember from a few years back is gone. The GST Council scrapped it in November 2017, yet plenty of billing software pages, including some ranking on page one right now, still describe it as current. If a vendor's GST page mentions air conditioning as a rate factor, that's a sign the copy hasn't been updated since 2017, and maybe the software hasn't either.

Does this matter for your billing software? Yes, because it needs to apply the right rate automatically, not leave it to whoever's on the till to remember. If you run a restaurant inside a hotel property, confirm the system can flip to 18% with ITC for that outlet specifically, and check the current rate and threshold with your CA, since both move.

Composition scheme: when your bill can't show GST at all

If your restaurant's turnover is under Rs 1.5 crore (Rs 75 lakh in the northeastern states and Himachal Pradesh), you can likely opt for the composition scheme, and that changes what your billing software needs to print.

Composition dealers pay a flat 5% of turnover as tax, with no ITC, and can't collect tax separately from the customer. That means no CGST and SGST split on the bill. Instead of a tax invoice, the law requires a Bill of Supply carrying the line "composition taxable person, not eligible to collect tax on supplies," a line that trips up a lot of composition owners the first time they see it printed.

One catch trips up a lot of small places: a restaurant serving liquor cannot use the composition scheme at all, full stop, according to ClearTax's guide to the GST composition scheme. A dry dhaba or a QSR might qualify, but add a bar license and you're back to regular registration and regular invoicing.

For the software itself, the ask is simple. Any restaurant POS software handling GST needs a per-outlet flag for composition versus regular registration, because the math, the document, and the wording on the bill are all different.

Who's on the hook for GST on your Zomato and Swiggy orders

Here's the one almost nobody selling billing software mentions. Since January 2022, under Section 9(5) of the CGST Act, Zomato and Swiggy are the ones legally required to pay GST and raise the invoice on most restaurant-service orders placed through their apps, not you. They pay it at 5% through their own cash ledger, whether or not your restaurant is separately GST-registered, and neither side claims input credit against it.

We've dug into who's actually on the hook for Zomato and Swiggy's commission and fees before, and the GST liability runs on the same logic: the platform holds more of the paperwork than most owners assume. For your billing software, an aggregator order and a dine-in order aren't the same animal. One gets invoiced by the platform. The other is yours to invoice, tax and all. Software that treats every order the same way risks double-invoicing, or folding aggregator sales into your own GSTR-1 as if you'd taxed them yourself.

The GST invoice checklist your billing software has to pass

A GST invoice for a restaurant bill isn't just "GSTIN printed somewhere." It needs a specific set of fields, every time:

• A sequential invoice number with no gaps or repeats across the financial year
• Your GSTIN, name, and registered address
• The date of the invoice and the place of supply
• HSN or SAC code (restaurant services sit under SAC 9963)
• A clear CGST and SGST split, shown as separate lines, not one combined "GST" figure
• The taxable value and the total, matching the amount the customer paid

If your turnover crossed Rs 5 crore in any year since FY 2017-18, some invoices, mainly B2B ones rather than table bills, may also need an e-invoice IRN. Most single-outlet restaurants never hit this, but check the current threshold with your CA if you run multiple outlets.

Ask any vendor to show you this list printed on a real bill from their system, not a slide deck. A missing field isn't a small thing to patch later. It's a bill your accountant can't file cleanly.

Where GST compliant billing software quietly breaks

Two situations expose bad GST billing software fast, and neither shows up in a demo.

The first is offline mode. GST requires invoice numbers to run in one unbroken sequence: no skips, no repeats. Multi-terminal restaurants, or anywhere with patchy internet, can break that without anyone noticing, since two terminals numbering from their own local counter will happily print two different bills as "Invoice #401" the same night.

Take a 60-seat multi-cuisine restaurant in Pune running two billing terminals on one GSTIN. Their old POS reset each terminal's counter independently, and on one packed Saturday, both fired "Invoice #401" within an hour of each other. The gap didn't surface until next month's GSTR-1 filing threw a duplicate-number error, and untangling which bill was really #401 took their accountant most of a week. One shared sequence across every terminal, synced the moment connectivity returns, would have made it a non-issue.

The second is split bills. GST wants one invoice per transaction, but Indian dine-in tables split constantly: four friends, four UPI payments, one table. Good software keeps one invoice for the table and lets payment split across methods underneath it, rather than inventing four separate GST invoices for one meal.

GST vs service charge: don't let your bill blur them

GST and service charge are not the same thing, and a bill that treats them as interchangeable creates two problems. GST is a tax fixed by law; under Section 15(2)(c) of the CGST Act, it applies to the full transaction value, including any service charge you add.

Service charge itself is a business decision, and since the CCPA's July 2022 guidelines, upheld by the Delhi High Court, it can't be added automatically or made a condition of service. It has to be disclosed as voluntary and shown as its own line, not folded into "tax." See the legal position on GST and service charge for the fuller picture.

This matters more at a bar than anywhere else, because a bar's bill already has to separate food GST from liquor's state VAT on one ticket, since alcohol sits outside GST entirely. We cover billing for bars, where food GST and liquor VAT sit on the same table in more depth.

What GST billing software for restaurants costs

Based on the public pricing pages of the tools in our restaurant billing software roundup, price shifts more by category than by brand, so it helps to know which shelf you're shopping from.

Confirm the all-in number at your real order volume, not the number on the homepage.

A buyer's checklist before you sign

Run any GST billing software for restaurants through these, and don't take a sales deck's word for it:

• Ask to see a Bill of Supply printed for a composition-scheme outlet, not just a standard tax invoice.
• Confirm invoice numbers stay sequential across every terminal and outlet, including after an offline stretch.
• Split bills on one table shouldn't spawn four separate GST invoices; make them show you how theirs handles it.
• Ask what happens to invoice numbering and GSTR-1 reconciliation if you switch providers mid-year. A weak answer here is a hidden switching cost you'll only feel next filing season.
• Running a bar? Confirm food GST and liquor VAT show up split correctly on the printed bill.
• If you sell only through Zomato or Swiggy, check whether you even need a GSTIN yet before paying for compliance features you don't need.

That's also where dineomai fits, worth naming since it's the tool we build. It takes the order in the diner's language and bills it in the same system: a GST invoice with CGST and SGST split as separate lines, food GST kept separate from liquor VAT on a bar's bill, and gap-free invoice numbers assigned at settlement, so a walkout never burns a number. Ordering and billing aren't two vendors stitched together, and the AI upsell that lifts the average ticket runs on the same rails. If Petpooja is your current all-in-one, what to look for if Petpooja isn't the right fit and the real difference between a POS and an ordering system are worth a read first.

FAQ

What is the GST rate for restaurants: 5% or 18%?

Most standalone restaurants, whatever the format or seating, charge a flat 5% GST with no input tax credit. The 18% rate applies only to restaurants inside a hotel where room tariff is Rs 7,500 or more a night, and only those restaurants can claim ITC. Confirm your rate with your CA, since thresholds get revised.

Can a restaurant claim input tax credit (ITC) under GST?

Only restaurants taxed at 18%, meaning those inside hotels with room tariff at or above Rs 7,500 a night, can claim ITC on GST paid on their inputs. Standalone restaurants at 5%, and composition-scheme restaurants at their flat rate, cannot claim any ITC at all.

What details must a GST-compliant restaurant bill include?

A compliant bill needs a gap-free sequential invoice number, your GSTIN and address, the invoice date, place of supply, the SAC code for restaurant services (9963), and a CGST/SGST split shown as separate lines, not one combined figure. Composition-scheme restaurants issue a Bill of Supply instead, with no tax split shown.

Does restaurant billing software auto-generate GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B reports?

Most solid billing software exports a GSTR-1-ready sales summary automatically, covering your outward supplies. GSTR-3B needs your purchase-side input credit too, so full auto-filing usually still runs through your CA or accounting software. Ask any vendor which of the two they generate and which they only feed data into.

Do I need a GST number to sell on Zomato or Swiggy?

Not always. Under Section 9(5) of the CGST Act, the platform is liable for GST on most orders placed through its app, and small restaurants below the registration threshold are exempt from registering just for that channel. If you also do dine-in or take direct orders, you likely still need to register, so confirm with your CA.

What to do next

Don't shop for GST billing software for restaurants on the strength of a single "GST-ready" bullet point. Ask to see a real Bill of Supply if you're on composition, a sequential invoice number that survives an offline stretch, and a bar bill splitting food GST from liquor VAT correctly. Run last month's actual volume through the pricing tiers above, then book a short demo of a system that handles that checklist and takes the order in the first place.