Salon POS Billing and the GST Invoice Format: Get Every Line Right

A salon invoice looks trivial — services, amounts, total. Then a corporate client asks for a proper GST invoice for reimbursement, or your CA asks why product sales and services share one line, and the trivial document turns out to have rules. Here is the format, line by line.

What a GST salon invoice must contain

For a GST-registered salon, every tax invoice needs:

1. Your details: legal name, address, GSTIN.
2. Invoice number and date — consecutive, unique, no gaps a scrutiny would question. (Software should make gaps impossible; books make them inevitable.)
3. Customer details — name at minimum; the customer’s GSTIN if they’re claiming input credit (B2B).
4. Line items with SAC/HSN codes: beauty and grooming services fall under SAC 9997 (commonly 999721/999722 for hairdressing and cosmetic treatment); retail products carry their own HSN codes.
5. Rate split per line: services at 18% GST; products at the product’s rate (shampoos and most cosmetics 18%, some categories differ).
6. CGST + SGST shown separately for in-state supply (9% + 9% on services), IGST for inter-state.
7. Total in figures, payment mode recorded.

The service-vs-product split matters

The classic error: a ₹1,500 facial and a ₹450 retail serum billed as one ₹1,950 “service”. Now your GST return misstates categories, your product inventory never decremented, and your service revenue is inflated. Every bill should carry services and products as separate lines with their own tax treatment — automatically, because no staff member at 7pm should be deciding tax classification by hand.

Composition scheme parlours

Smaller salons under the composition scheme (service providers up to ₹50 lakh turnover, paying 6%) issue a bill of supply, not a tax invoice — no tax shown on the bill, and the words “composition taxable person, not eligible to collect tax” required on it. If you’re composition and your bills show 18% GST collected, you have a problem worth a call to your CA this week.

The audit checklist

Run your last 10 bills through this:

• GSTIN printed and correct?
• Invoice numbers consecutive?
• Services and products on separate lines with correct rates?
• CGST/SGST split shown?
• Discounts shown before tax, not after? (Post-tax discounting misstates your tax collected — a surprisingly common software bug.)
• Payment mode recorded on every bill?
• Monthly summary matches what your CA files?

If three or more fail, your billing setup — software or notebook — is generating quiet liabilities at roughly 25 bills a day, 750 a month.

What most vendors won’t tell you

“GST-ready” on a brochure often means “we print GSTIN on the bill”. The real test is the month-end: can the system hand your CA a filing-ready summary — outward supplies by rate, B2B invoices listed with GSTINs, credit notes accounted — or does it export a CSV your CA bills you extra hours to untangle? Ask to see the actual monthly GST report, not the invoice template. The invoice is the easy 10%; the return is where “GST-ready” goes to die.

The 30-second compliant bill

None of this is allowed to slow the counter down. The correct experience: staff taps services and products, and the tax classification, SAC codes, rate splits and invoice numbering happen invisibly, every time, with the invoice on the customer’s WhatsApp before they reach the door. That is how EaseSeat’s POS does it — compliance as a side effect of billing, with the filing-ready summary waiting at month-end. See the billing flow on the platform page, or check what’s included at each tier on pricing.