Send material out on a delivery challan, track what is still lying at each jobworker, and never miss a Section 143 return date. ReadyBooks arms the one-year and three-year return timer automatically, runs a daily deemed-supply sweep, and produces a ready-to-file ITC-04 return — all native, no Tally customisation.
Delivery challans, deemed-supply protection, per-jobworker balances, and the ITC-04 file — built into ReadyBooks, not bolted on.
Move goods without a tax invoice on a Rule 55 delivery challan. Six challan types are supported — Branch Transfer, Sample, Approval, Job Work, Liquid/Gas, and Other — and approval challans convert to an invoice when the goods are accepted.
Raise a Job Work OUT challan and ReadyBooks starts the return-due clock automatically: due date = challan date + 1 year for inputs, + 3 years for capital goods. The deadline lives on the order, not in someone's head.
A daily sweep finds challans that crossed their Section 143 due date and raises the deemed-supply sales invoice for you — GST at the original rate, HSN carried over from the challan. Surprise liabilities are caught before an officer does.
Partial and multiple returns are tracked, and each inbound return line links back to its original outbound line. The not-yet-returned balance per job-work order is always visible, so you can reconcile material per jobworker at any time.
If you are the jobworker, record the principal's incoming material as a PMR. It stays off your books — no stock ledger entry, no journal entry — and is shown only for ITC-04 audit, with per-line returned quantity and a balance view.
ReadyBooks aggregates ITC-04 Tables 4, 5A, 5B and 5C into a ready-to-file Excel return and tracks the ARN after you file. Job work challans generate a "Job Work" sub-supply e-way bill that does not consume your monthly e-way-bill quota.
Most accounting tools stop at the challan. ReadyBooks treats the challan, the deadline, the balance, and the return as one connected workflow.
The one-year and three-year return windows are computed and tracked the moment you send material out. You do not maintain a return-date spreadsheet, and you do not get blindsided by a deemed-supply liability you forgot about.
Every return links back to the outbound line it answers, so the quantity still at each jobworker is a live number — not a fortnightly reconciliation against memory and loose challan books.
Tables 4, 5A, 5B and 5C are aggregated from the challans, returns and deemed-supply flags you already recorded. You file the produced Excel on the portal and record the ARN to lock the quarter — no re-keying.
A Principal Material Receipt records incoming material for ITC-04 visibility without a stock or journal entry, so your inventory and balance sheet are never inflated by goods that are not yours.
Job work is the backbone of Indian manufacturing. The textile clusters of Surat, the auto-parts shops of Ludhiana, the pharma packers of Ahmedabad — almost none of them own every process end to end. Material goes out for dyeing, plating, machining, embroidery, packing, and comes back in lots over days or weeks. The compliance burden is not the processing; it is the paperwork and the clock. A challan for every movement, an e-way bill where the value crosses the threshold, a running balance of what is where, and a quarterly ITC-04 that reconciles it all.
The expensive failure mode is Section 143 deemed supply. Inputs must return within one year and capital goods within three; miss the window and GST law treats the goods as sold to the jobworker on the day they left, with interest and penalty exposure on top. That liability appears silently when a date passes. ReadyBooks is built so the date watches itself: the timer arms on the outbound challan and a daily sweep raises the deemed-supply invoice the moment a challan goes overdue.
Because the challan, the e-way bill, the per-jobworker balance, the Section 143 timer and the ITC-04 file all live in the same system that already holds your invoices and ledgers, there is nothing to reconcile across tools and nothing to customise. That is the difference between native job-work GST compliance and a workaround stitched onto a general-purpose accounting package.
A complete job-work cycle in ReadyBooks moves goods out, tracks them at the jobworker, brings them back in lots, and rolls everything into the quarterly ITC-04.
It starts on the principal side. You open Manufacturing > Job Work and raise a Job Work OUT delivery challan listing the items, quantities and the jobworker. Under Rule 55 of the CGST Rules a delivery challan — not a tax invoice — accompanies goods that are moving without a sale, which is exactly the job-work case. The same Delivery Challans surface also covers Branch Transfer, Sample, Approval, Liquid/Gas and Other movements, so one flow handles branch transfers and samples-on-approval as well. Where the consignment value crosses the e-way bill threshold, the challan generates an e-way bill with the "Job Work" sub-supply type, and that delivery-challan e-way bill does not consume your monthly e-way-bill quota.
The moment the outbound challan is issued, ReadyBooks arms the Section 143 return timer: due date = challan date + 1 year for inputs, + 3 years for capital goods. As the jobworker returns processed goods — usually in several lots — you record each return, and every inbound return line links back to the specific outbound line it answers. That linkage keeps the not-yet-returned balance per job-work order live, and it is the same data that reconciles Table 4 (challans sent) against Table 5A (returns received) when you prepare ITC-04.
At quarter end you open GST > ITC-04. ReadyBooks aggregates the four tables — Table 4 for challans sent to jobworkers, Table 5A for returns received, Table 5B for challans flagged as deemed supply in the quarter, and Table 5C for principal material you received as a jobworker — and produces a ready-to-file ITC-04 Excel file. You file it on the GST portal, then record the ARN in ReadyBooks to lock the quarter. ReadyBooks prepares the file and tracks the ARN; it does not file directly to the portal.
Section 143 of the CGST Act sets hard return windows for job-work goods, and missing them converts a non-sale into a taxable supply.
Section 143 lets a principal send inputs and capital goods to a jobworker without paying GST at dispatch, on the condition that the goods come back within a set window. For inputs the window is one year from the date they were sent out; for capital goods it is three years. If the goods are not received back (or supplied onward from the jobworker's premises) within that window, the law deems that the principal supplied the goods to the jobworker on the day they were originally sent. The principal then owes GST on that deemed supply, and because the deemed date is backdated to dispatch, interest and penalty exposure stacks on top.
This is the trap that catches busy manufacturers. The liability does not announce itself — it crystallises when a return date silently passes while the goods are still at the jobworker, often because a lot was forgotten or a jobworker went quiet. ReadyBooks closes that gap two ways. First, the return timer is computed on every Job Work OUT challan, so each lot carries its own one-year or three-year due date. Second, a daily automatic sweep scans for challans that have crossed their due date with a balance still outstanding and raises the deemed-supply sales invoice for you — GST charged at the original rate on the challan, and the HSN carried over from the challan line — so the liability is recognised correctly and on time rather than discovered in an audit.
Those deemed-supply invoices are not just an accounting safeguard. Each one is flagged for the quarter and flows into Table 5B of your ITC-04, which is the table that declares challans treated as deemed supply during the period. So the same automation that protects you from a surprise liability also keeps your ITC-04 internally consistent — what the sweep raised as deemed supply is exactly what Table 5B reports.
ITC-04 reconciles material sent to and received from jobworkers across four tables, and ReadyBooks builds the file from data you already captured.
ITC-04 is the quarterly return through which a principal accounts for goods moving to and from jobworkers. It has four moving parts. Table 4 lists the challans you sent to jobworkers during the quarter. Table 5A lists the goods received back from jobworkers. Table 5B lists the challans that were treated as deemed supply during the quarter. Table 5C captures, for businesses that act as jobworkers themselves, the principal material received from their principals. ReadyBooks aggregates all four from your challans, returns, deemed-supply flags and Principal Material Receipts, then auto-prepares the return as a ready-to-file Excel file.
The workflow is deliberately concrete. You open GST > ITC-04, review the aggregated tables, and download the produced file. You upload and file that file on the GST portal yourself, and then you record the ARN against the quarter in ReadyBooks to lock it. Locking the quarter prevents the underlying challans and returns from being edited after the fact, which keeps your filed return and your books in agreement. To be precise about scope: ReadyBooks produces the ready-to-file ITC-04 file and tracks the ARN — it does not file directly to the GST portal.
If you are on the jobworker side of a relationship, Table 5C is where your Principal Material Receipts surface. Because a PMR records incoming principal material without any stock ledger or journal entry, your books stay clean while the material is still fully visible for the ITC-04 audit trail, with per-line returned quantity and a balance view of what you still hold against each principal.
Goods sent for processing move on a delivery challan, and ReadyBooks ties the matching e-way bill to it without burning your sales quota.
A delivery challan under Rule 55 is the document that legally accompanies goods moving for a reason other than a sale — job work being the canonical example. ReadyBooks supports the full Rule 55 set of challan types: Branch Transfer for moving stock between your own locations, Sample for goods sent as samples, Approval for goods sent on a sale-or-return basis, Job Work for material sent out to be processed, Liquid/Gas for bulk supplies where quantity is not known at dispatch, and Other for anything else. Approval challans are special — when the recipient accepts the goods, the challan converts into a tax invoice, so the sale is recognised at the right moment without re-entering the line items.
For job work specifically, the Job Work OUT challan is the document that both moves the goods and arms the Section 143 timer. Where the consignment value crosses the e-way bill threshold, that challan generates an e-way bill carrying the "Job Work" sub-supply type, so the document type and sub-supply classification are correct without manual picking. A practical detail that matters at volume: delivery-challan e-way bills do not consume your monthly e-way-bill quota, so heavy job-work movement never eats into the e-way bills you need for actual sales invoices.
Because the challan, its e-way bill and the return tracking all reference the same job-work order, there is one source of truth for each consignment. You can see, per jobworker and per order, what was sent, what came back, what is still outstanding, when each lot is due under Section 143, and what has already tipped into deemed supply — without joining three separate registers by hand.
Real Indian manufacturing setups where job-work GST compliance is the daily grind, not an edge case.
Each Job Work OUT challan tracks its own balance, so the cloth still at the dyeing unit and the panels still at the stitching unit are separate live numbers. The Section 143 one-year clock arms per lot, and the daily sweep flags anything overdue before it becomes a silent deemed-supply liability.
Inputs carry a one-year return window and capital goods a three-year window automatically. Partial returns from the machining shop link back to the outbound line, so the outstanding balance is exact, and the e-way bill on each challan uses the Job Work sub-supply type without touching the sales e-way-bill quota.
Every principal's incoming consignment is logged as a Principal Material Receipt — no stock entry, no journal entry — with per-line returned quantity and a balance view per principal. At quarter end that data populates Table 5C of the ready-to-file ITC-04 file automatically.