E-way Bill System issued Advisory on Verification of Transporter ID in E-way Bills

The E-way bill system has issued an advisory on the verification of transporter ID in E-way bills based on the queries received by the transporters and taxpayers.

We have received queries/clarifications from some transporters and taxpayers regarding the verification of transporter Id in the e-waybill system. There are 3 categories of transporters in the e-Waybill System.

They are:

1. GST registered Transporters: In this category, the transporter gets registered in the GST Common portal and obtains a GSTIN number.

2. Enrolled transporters: In this category, there are small transporters who want to do transport business but are not registered in GST Common portal and do not have the GST number. So, the transporter enrols himself in the e-waybill portal based on the PAN and obtains a TRANSIN that looks similar to a GSTIN number. They are called as Enrolled transporters.

3. Common enrolled transporters: This is the third category of transporters. They are normal GST registered transporters having multiple GSTINs across different states. Such transporters move consignments with e-waybills which passes through multiple states. This involves transhipments and updating of transporter Id of the respective state for the e-waybills.

To ease the process of updating transporter Id, a common enrolment facility is provided in the e-waybill system as per Notification No. 28/2018 Dated 19th June 2018– Central Tax. In this, the GST registered transporters can club all their GSTINs and enrol for common enrolment so that they obtain an enrolment number that is similar to GSTIN but starting with 88 followed by the same PAN.

For example, a GST Registered transporter may have GSTIN like 29ABCDE1234FX12, 27ABCDE1234FX13 etc. When they get common enrolled, they get a number 88ABCDE1234FX13. Transporters can use this number to update the transporter Id. This facility is provided so that as the goods move from one state to other state the transporter Id can be kept same instead of updating with GSTIN of transporters of their respective states.

After analysis it is observed that some of the ERP, GSP, ASP, SAP and other automated systems are not verifying the transporter Id of all the given types. This is affecting the business of some of the transporters. Some of the ERP/GSP/ASP/SAP systems are verifying only the ‘GST registered Transporters’ using the ‘Get GSTIN details’ API to verify the authenticity of the transporter ID.

This API will return the status only for the GST registered transporters. For the enrolled and common enrolled transporters, the API will return as Invalid status. There is another API ‘Get TRANSIN details’ to verify the transporter id under the categories of ‘enrolled and common enrolled transporters.

Hence, it is requested to use the API ‘Get TRANSIN Details’ also, in addition to ‘Get GSTIN details’ API. As ERP system cannot distinguish between registered and enrolled transporter IDs, hence the ERP may be modified to first call the ‘Get GSTIN Details’ to verify the transporter Id and in case the status is invalid then call ‘Get TRANSIN details’ API before finally concluding the status of the transporter Id.

Details of APIs are given below:

Similarly, in e-Waybill Portal, two options to verify the GST taxpayers and transporters are provided under the Search option in the main menu.

1. Taxpayers: This option returns the details of the taxpayers registered under GST. The status of the enrolled and common enrolled transporters cannot be verified using this option.

2. Transporters: This options returns the details of the taxpayers registered under GST as well as the status of the enrolled and common enrolled transporters. So, for verifying the transporters, this option may be used instead of the previous one.