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Confusion reined at retail outlets early on Saturday morning with software glitches hitting operations in several outlets as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) came into force as of midnight on Friday.
A quick trip to a few outlets in the first hour of business today gave a glimpse into how GST is being implemented.
Several front-enders and other staff are still not aware what GST is about. Though lakhs of businesses switched to the new software in order to conform with the new structure, several systems in their networks have not been updated.
This has forced the staff to depend on manual billing, triggering queues at cash counters. “The systems were updated last night itself. We made test runs too. But the billing software is not live at the moment. It will be ready soon,” a staffer at a Heritage Fresh outlet in Jawaharnagar in Hyderabad said.
He said it would take a while before the processes become smooth. “It will be business as usual soon,” he said.
Staffers in some retail outlets don't even know what GST is. "What is it?" asked staffers in the retail outlets, as they summoned their store managers to clear the "doubts of customers".
It has been the practice in the retail chains not to charge the customers any tax. They generally factor in the taxes within the MRP rates of goods in order not to put additional burden on them. However, they make it a point to indicate the tax component to show the kind of savings they made while shopping at a particular outlet.
Lakhs of businesses across the country worked overnight, deploying IT teams to adopt the GST regime. Though the backend teams have been working for some days to link the systems with inventories, actual transition happened after the shops closed last night.
The internal IT teams of big chains and other business entities across verticals, besides IT service providers have been working extra hours over the last one week to get the systems ready by July 1.
Mom-and-pop outlets have not been affected as they fall below the GST threshhold turnover.
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