When you add a customer or supplier, you can type their GSTIN and let Finocket fetch the rest. The name and address come from the GST portal itself, so you are not copying them off a bill and hoping it was right.
How it works
- Type the 15-character GSTIN into the client form.
- As soon as it is a valid number, their PAN and state fill in on their own. Those come from the GSTIN itself, so they are instant and cost nothing.
- Tap Fetch details to pull the legal name, trade name and registered address from the GST portal.
Setting up your own business
The same lookup runs on your own details as well as your clients’. Setup now starts by asking for your GSTIN, and fills in what the government already holds:
- your legal name and trade name;
- your registered address (address lines, city, state and PIN code);
- whether you file as Regular or Composition, read from your registration instead of being something you have to know and pick;
- whether e-invoicing applies to you.
After that you only add a phone number and an email address, because those are the two things the GST register does not hold. If you have no GSTIN, tap I don’t have a GSTIN and fill the form in yourself. Nothing about setup depends on having one.
Changing your GSTIN later
Under Settings → Business details, Finocket checks your GSTIN against the register whenever you enter or change it, and tells you if the registration is cancelled, suspended, or on the composition scheme.
If the registered address differs from the one you have saved, you are shown both side by side and pick, field by field, which ones to replace. This helps when your saved address carries a correction the register never had, such as a unit number or a landmark you added so deliveries arrive. Tick only the lines you want changed, and press Save to keep them; nothing is saved until you do.
Finding a business by name
Where business search is switched on for your workspace, you do not need the GSTIN to start. Type three or more letters of the business name in the client form, the Add company box or the setup page, and up to eight matches appear from the Indian company register (MCA) and the MSME register (Udyam). Each shows its register, district, PIN code and the year it was registered.
- Pick a match. Its legal name, address, city, state and PIN code fill in, and the place of supply follows the state. On a phone the search opens as a full-screen sheet with large rows.
- Only fields that are still empty are filled. What you typed is kept, and a note says so.
- A Udyam enterprise is often one person’s business, so its address is not shown in the list. It appears only after you pick it.
- If the register lists a state that does not match the PIN code, the PIN code wins and a note tells you the state was set from it. Check it.
- Then type the GSTIN: the GST portal lookup above completes what the register does not hold. If the GSTIN’s state differs from the register’s, what you chose stays.
If you already have the same business as a client, you are told before you save, with a link to open it. A company’s CIN is saved in the notes while they are empty. The register holds no phone number, email address, GSTIN or PAN. “No match”, “search is unavailable” and “search needs a connection” are three different messages, and none of them stops you typing the details yourself. Source: MCA / Udyam via data.gov.in (GODL-India); each pick shows the date of the data.
What it will not fill
The GST portal does not hold a phone number, an email address or a UPI ID. Those still need typing, and Finocket says so rather than leaving you waiting for contact details that are never coming.
It never overwrites what you typed
Autofill fills empty fields only. If you have already written a name or corrected an address, it is left exactly as you wrote it. Your version of a customer’s name is often the one you actually recognise.
The warnings are the valuable part
Two of them are worth more than the autofill:
- Cancelled registration. If a supplier’s GST registration has been cancelled, claiming input tax credit against their invoices can be reversed later with interest. Nothing you can check offline will tell you this.
- Composition scheme. A composition taxpayer cannot pass on input tax credit at all, so an invoice from them does not give you any.
If it cannot check
Finocket keeps two answers apart on purpose. “This GSTIN is not on the GST portal” means the number is well-formed but nobody is registered under it, usually because of a typo. “We could not reach the GST portal” means we do not know, and you should try again later. Either way you can save the client and carry on.
A GSTIN is always optional. Plenty of customers are not registered, and that is normal.
Related: GST reports and returns.