Published 11 October 2026
Since October 2024 a registered business’s input tax credit has depended on a dashboard. Every invoice its suppliers report lands there, and the business can accept it, reject it, or keep it pending. If it does nothing, the portal treats the invoice as accepted. If it rejects a supplier’s credit note, the tax goes back onto the supplier’s next return. And since October 2025 it can say how much of a credit note’s credit it actually took, instead of having the whole amount reversed. None of this is in the CGST Rules yet. It is run by GSTN, under an amended section 38 and a series of portal advisories, and it decides what goes into GSTR-2B and from there into GSTR-3B.
This guide covers the procedure. The credit conditions themselves are explained in input tax credit: the conditions in section 16, and the place of IMS in the month is in the returns calendar.
The legal footing
Three provisions carry the system.
- Section 16(2)(aa) allows credit only where the details of the invoice or debit note have been furnished by the supplier and communicated to the recipient in the manner specified under section 37. Rule 36(4) makes the communication concrete. No credit may be availed on such an invoice unless it is in the supplier’s GSTR-1 (as amended in GSTR-1A) or IFF, and its credit has been communicated in FORM GSTR-2B under rule 60(7).
- Section 38 provides for the statement. From 1 October 2025, section 127 of the Finance Act, 2025 (in force by Notification No. 16/2025-Central Tax) replaced “an auto-generated statement” with “a statement”, and added clause © to section 38(2), “such other details as may be prescribed”. The statement need no longer be purely automatic, which is what allows it to reflect the recipient’s own actions.
- Rule 60 still describes GSTR-2B as an “auto-generated” statement and says nothing of accepting or rejecting records.
No rule and no CBIC circular yet governs IMS. CBIC’s list of GST circulars contains none on it, up to Circular No. 256/02/2026-GST. The procedure below comes from GSTN’s advisories and the IMS user manual and FAQs on the portal. At its meeting of 8 October 2026 the GST Council recommended inserting a rule 60(6A) to provide for IMS in the rules, “including the period for which a credit note can be kept pending”. It proposed that this apply from the return for April 2027. Until then, IMS rests on the portal’s design.
What to have ready
- The purchase register for the period (books), with supplier GSTIN, invoice number, date, taxable value and tax, matched to goods or services actually received.
- The credit already taken on each invoice (books and earlier GSTR-3Bs). It is needed to declare how much credit to reduce when accepting a credit note.
- Supplier credit notes and amendments (supplier correspondence and the IMS dashboard).
- Bills of entry for imports, including from SEZ (customs records and ICEGATE). They appear in IMS from the October 2025 period.
- Reverse charge purchases (books). They do not pass through IMS but still appear in GSTR-2B.
- Balances in the Electronic Credit Reversal and Re-claimed Statement and the RCM Liability/ITC Statement (portal, Services > Ledger). They check the credit figures in GSTR-3B.
- The previous period’s GSTR-3B, already filed (portal). Without it the GSTR-2B for the current period is not generated on the 14th.
Who can use IMS, and what appears in it
The portal’s IMS FAQs give access to normal taxpayers, including SEZ units and developers, and casual taxpayers. A record appears in the recipient’s IMS as soon as the supplier saves it in GSTR-1, GSTR-1A or IFF, before the supplier files. If the supplier edits a saved record before filing, the edited version replaces it and any action already taken is reset. A record deleted before filing disappears.
Some records never reach IMS but go straight to GSTR-2B (IMS FAQs, question 8):
- documents from GSTR-5 (non-resident taxable persons) and GSTR-6 (Input Service Distributors)
- reverse charge records
- documents on which credit is not available because of the place of supply rules or section 16(4), which go to the “ITC Not Available” section
- credit to be reversed under rule 37A
Bills of entry for imports were added to IMS, as a separate “Import of Goods” section, from the October 2025 period (GSTN advisory of 30 October 2025). The only actions allowed on them are accept and pending.
Four statuses and what each does
Each record carries one of four statuses. The table below is taken from the IMS FAQs (question 14) and the GSTN FAQs on the October 2025 changes.
| Status | Effect on the recipient’s GSTR-2B and GSTR-3B | Effect on the supplier |
|---|---|---|
| Accept | Goes to “ITC Available” in GSTR-2B and auto-populates in GSTR-3B. For a credit note, reduces credit (see below). | None on an invoice. On a credit note, the supplier’s reduction stands. |
| Reject | Goes to an “ITC Rejected” section of GSTR-2B, for view only. Does not flow to GSTR-3B. | On a rejected credit note, or a rejected downward amendment, the amount is added back to the supplier’s liability in its next GSTR-3B. |
| Pending | Left out of GSTR-2B and GSTR-3B for now. Stays in IMS for a later period. | None until the recipient acts. |
| No action | “Deemed accepted at the time of GSTR-2B generation”. | As for accept. |
An action can be changed as many times as needed until the recipient files the GSTR-3B for the period. The latest action overwrites earlier ones, and filing freezes it. On filing, accepted and rejected records for that GSTR-2B period leave IMS. Pending records and records of future periods stay.
How long a record may stay pending. For ordinary invoices and debit notes, until the time limit in section 16(4). After that the record is removed from IMS. For credit notes and certain amendments there is a shorter limit, described below.
Rejected invoices. A rejection does not reduce the supplier’s tax on an invoice it reported. If the supplier has not yet filed GSTR-1, it can correct and re-file the record. If it has filed, it must report the record again in GSTR-1A or a later GSTR-1, after which it reappears in IMS (IMS FAQs, question 19). The supplier sees each customer’s action, and any remarks, in the supplier view of the IMS dashboard (GSTN advisory of 13 November 2024).
Amendments. If an original record and its amendment fall in different GSTR-2B periods, the recipient must act on the original and file the GSTR-3B for that period before it can act on the amendment. If both fall in the same period, the action on the amendment prevails (IMS FAQs, question 13).
Credit notes: the 2025 changes
Two changes, one in the Act and one on the portal, took effect in October 2025.
The Act. The proviso to section 34(2), substituted by section 126 of the Finance Act, 2025 from 1 October 2025, provides that “no reduction in output tax liability of the supplier shall be permitted” if the credit attributable to the credit note, “if availed, has not been reversed by the recipient, where such recipient is a registered person”. For an unregistered recipient, the test is whether the incidence of tax has been passed on. A supplier’s credit note therefore reduces its tax only if the customer reverses the matching credit.
The portal. IMS gives effect to this. If the recipient accepts a credit note, its credit in GSTR-2B is reduced. If the recipient rejects it, the supplier’s liability is added back. Before October 2025 there were two problems. Accepting a credit note reversed its full credit even where the recipient had never taken that credit, or had reversed part of it already. And a credit note could not be kept pending. GSTN’s advisories of 23 September, 8 October and 17 October 2025, and its FAQs on the October 2025 changes, made three changes. They apply only to records reported by suppliers for the October 2025 period onwards.
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Pending is allowed, for one tax period only, for these “specified records”:
- credit notes, and upward amendments of credit notes
- downward amendments of a credit note whose original was rejected
- downward amendments of an invoice or debit note whose original was accepted and whose GSTR-3B has been filed
- downward amendments of e-commerce operator documents on the same footing
The limit is the due date of the GSTR-3B for the period after the applicable GSTR-2B period. GSTN’s example: credit notes in a GSTR-1 filed on 10 November 2025 belong to the October 2025 GSTR-2B. They may be kept pending until the due date of the November 2025 GSTR-3B, 20 December 2025. For a quarterly recipient the period is one quarter. After that “Pending action will be disabled”, and a record on which no action is taken “will be deemed accepted”.
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The recipient declares how much credit to reduce. On accepting a specified record, the portal asks “Whether ITC need to be reduced for the selected record(s)?”. No means no credit was taken on the original invoice, so none is reduced. Yes with no amount means the full credit is reduced. Yes with a lower amount in the “Amount declared by taxpayer for ITC reduction” columns means a partial reversal. The portal will not accept an amount above the auto-populated value, a zero or a negative figure. GSTR-2B is then computed on the declared amount.
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Remarks. The recipient can record a remark when rejecting or keeping a record pending. Remarks are mandatory for a partial or nil reversal. They show in GSTR-2B and in the supplier’s view.
Records rejected by mistake. GSTN’s advisory of 19 June 2025 sets out the remedy once the GSTR-3B has been filed. The recipient asks the supplier to report the same record, unchanged, in GSTR-1A for the period or in the amendment table of a later GSTR-1. The recipient then accepts it and recomputes GSTR-2B. Because amendment tables take only the difference, the supplier’s liability does not rise again. For a credit note rejected by mistake, the supplier’s liability is first added back on the rejection and then reduced again on the re-reported note, so the net effect counts once. The recipient gets the credit only in the GSTR-2B of the period in which the record is re-reported.
GSTR-2B: when it is generated
Rule 60(8) makes GSTR-2B available a day after the due date of the GSTR-1 or IFF for the month, whichever is later. With GSTR-1 due on the 11th and IFF on the 13th, that is the 14th. The portal generates a draft GSTR-2B on the 14th of the following month. Its FAQs give the cut-off for each source:
- Monthly suppliers’ GSTR-1 and GSTR-1A: from 00:00 on the 12th of the month to 23:59 on the 11th of the next month.
- Quarterly GSTR-1, IFF, GSTR-5 and GSTR-6: from the 14th to the 13th.
- Imports: bills of entry received from ICEGATE up to the 13th of the next month, with a reference date in the month.
A document filed after the cut-off goes into the next open GSTR-2B, whatever its invoice date. Details added in GSTR-1A go into the next open GSTR-2B as well (rule 60(7)(iia)). When the due dates of GSTR-1 move, the generation date moves too. The December 2024 GSTR-2B was generated on 16 January 2025 after the GSTR-1 dates were extended (GSTN advisory of 14 January 2025).
Regeneration. The recipient can change actions in IMS after the 14th, up to the filing of its GSTR-3B, and then recompute GSTR-2B. There is no limit on how many times it can recompute before filing. If any action has changed since the draft was generated, recomputing is “mandatory”, so that GSTR-3B picks up the change (IMS FAQs, questions 24, 26 and 29). GSTN’s advisory of 8 October 2025 confirms that GSTR-2B “will continue to be generated automatically on the 14th of every month”, and that credit “will continue to auto-populate from GSTR-2B to GSTR-3B”.
When it is not generated. According to GSTN’s advisory of 16 November 2024, the portal does not generate GSTR-2B on the 14th in two cases:
- A quarterly (QRMP) recipient gets no GSTR-2B for the first and second months of the quarter. A single quarterly statement, GSTR-2BQ, is generated on the 14th of the month after the quarter. Rule 60(8)(i), read literally, provides for a monthly statement for each of the first two months. The portal’s design under IMS does not produce one.
- A recipient who has not filed the previous period’s GSTR-3B gets no GSTR-2B until it files. It then generates the statement itself with the COMPUTE GSTR-2B button on the IMS dashboard.
What GSTR-2B shows
FORM GSTR-2B, as prescribed, has three summary tables, each pointing to a GSTR-3B table.
| GSTR-2B | Content | GSTR-3B table |
|---|---|---|
| Table 3, Part A, I | Credit from registered suppliers (B2B, debit notes, e-commerce documents, amendments) | 4(A)(5) |
| Table 3, Part A, II | Credit from Input Service Distributors | 4(A)(4) |
| Table 3, Part A, III | Reverse charge supplies | 3.1(d) for tax, 4(A)(3) for credit |
| Table 3, Part A, IV | Imports of goods, including from SEZ | 4(A)(1) |
| Table 3, Part B | Credit notes, netted off the credit tables | 4(A)(3), (4), (5); 3.1(d) |
| Table 4 | Credit not available: section 16(4), or supplier and place of supply in the same State while the recipient is in another | 4(D)(2) |
| Table 5 | Credit to be reversed under rule 37A, shown only in the September GSTR-2B, made available in October | 4(B)(2) |
Rule 37A requires the recipient to reverse credit by 30 November where the supplier has not filed its GSTR-3B for the period by 30 September after the year. It may take the credit again once the supplier files. Credit on imports of services is not in GSTR-2B and is entered by the recipient in table 4(A)(2) of GSTR-3B. The portal adds the “ITC Rejected” section to the prescribed form to show records rejected in IMS.
GSTR-2B is a static, read-only statement. The recipient cannot add to it or change it (GSTR-2B FAQs).
GSTR-2A is only a view
Rule 60(1) to (6) makes the suppliers’ details available in FORM GSTR-2A. Part A holds GSTR-1, GSTR-1A, IFF and GSTR-5 details; Part B, GSTR-6; Part C, TDS and TCS; Part D, imports. GSTR-2A changes in near real time as suppliers file or amend, and it “shall continue to be generated as it is” under IMS (IMS FAQs, question 28). It is useful for tracing a supplier’s filing history. It is not the statement under section 16(2)(aa), and no action is taken on it.
Working on the portal
The portal’s IMS user manual describes the steps:
- The recipient opens Services > Returns > Invoice Management System (IMS) Dashboard, and the inward supplies view. It shows, for each type of record, how many are at “No Action”, “Accepted”, “Rejected” and “Pending”.
- Clicking a table heading or a count lists the records. They can be filtered by supplier GSTIN, status, return period, filing status, supplier filing frequency, date or place of supply. Above 500 records, the advanced search is used.
- For each record, A accepts it, R rejects it and P marks it pending. Several records can be selected and given the same action at once. SAVE, then PROCEED, records the action.
- On accepting a credit note or other specified record, the recipient answers the question on credit reduction. Where it enters a partial amount or answers No, it records a remark with ENTER REMARK.
- After the 14th, if any action has changed, the COMPUTE GSTR-2B button becomes active. The recipient clicks it, then AGREE AND CONTINUE, and checks the result in the GSTR-2B tile on the returns dashboard.
- The data can be downloaded in Excel. Since April 2026 an Excel-based IMS Offline Tool allows actions on single or bulk records offline (GSTN advisory of 21 April 2026).
Signing, late fee and interest
IMS actions are not signed, and GSTR-2B is not filed, so neither has a due date or a late fee. The signature and the time limit attach to the GSTR-3B that uses them, covered in the GSTR-3B guide.
The money consequences come through other provisions:
- Credit claimed in GSTR-3B above what GSTR-2B makes available, beyond the limit recommended by the Council, triggers an intimation in FORM GST DRC-01C under rule 88D. The recipient must pay with interest or explain within seven days. Until it does, rule 59(6)(e) blocks its next GSTR-1.
- Interest on credit “wrongly availed and utilised” runs under section 50(3).
- An invoice kept pending past the section 16(4) date leaves IMS, and its credit is lost under that section.
What can be changed afterwards
Actions are frozen when the GSTR-3B for the period is filed. After that, a mistaken action can be undone only through the supplier re-reporting the record, as described above. A record left without action at the 14th is deemed accepted for that GSTR-2B. If the credit is wrong, the recipient corrects it in GSTR-3B: it does not claim, or it reverses, the credit in table 4. The guide on correcting mistakes in returns covers the later corrections.
The procedure in order
- File the previous period’s GSTR-3B, so that the current GSTR-2B is generated.
- Reconcile the records in IMS with the purchase register as suppliers save them.
- Accept records matched to goods or services received. Reject those not owed. Keep pending those not yet due, remembering that credit notes may stay pending for one tax period only.
- On accepting a credit note, declare whether, and how much, credit is to be reduced, with a remark for a partial or nil reduction.
- After the 14th, review the draft GSTR-2B, change any actions, and recompute.
- Carry GSTR-2B into GSTR-3B. Reverse what rule 37A, rule 42, rule 43 or section 17(5) requires, and report ineligible credit in table 4(D).
- For a record rejected by mistake, ask the supplier to re-report it in GSTR-1A or a later GSTR-1, and accept it then.
The next guide covers GSTR-3B: the tables, the locked liability, payment through the ledgers, interest on the net cash liability, and filing.