Tent House Bill Format in Word and Excel, With a Worked GST Bill

Most people who search for this want the layout of the triplicate bill book every tent house keeps on the counter: top copy to the client, second copy to accounts, third copy left in the book. That layout is fine for a small cash job. A registered tent house is issuing a tax invoice, though, and the top copy has to carry your name, address and GSTIN, a serial number, the date, the client's name (and GSTIN if they are registered), each service with its SAC, quantity, taxable value, tax rate and the CGST, SGST or IGST amount. Rule 46 of the CGST Rules limits the serial number to 16 characters made of letters, digits, / and -, and Rule 47 gives a service invoice 30 days from the date of service, as ClearTax and TaxGuru summarise both rules. So TH/2627/0148 works. 'Bill 148, Nov wedding' does not. Keep the carbon book if your counter likes it, but make sure those fields are printed on it.

Charge per day for material that sits on the lawn and earns by the day: pandal, chairs, tables, lighting, generator. Charge per event for work you do once: laying carpet, building the stage, labour, transport. In the sample, the 60 x 100 ft pandal at ₹18,000 a day bills ₹36,000 for two days, while 6,000 sq ft of carpet at ₹2 bills ₹12,000 whether the wedding runs two days or four. The argument usually starts when the muhurat moves and a two-day booking becomes three. On this bill a third day adds ₹37,000 before GST: pandal ₹18,000, chairs ₹3,000, tables ₹6,000, lighting ₹4,500, generator ₹5,500. Print the rule at the bottom of the bill, extra days at the daily rate and per-event lines do not repeat, and nobody has to negotiate it at 11 pm at the venue.

A refundable deposit is money you are holding, not something you sold, so it sits on its own line under the invoice total and not inside the taxable value. Whether it ever becomes taxable when you keep part of it against shortages is a tax question. The CA-checked GST guide on this site covers rental at 18% but not deposits, so put that one to your own CA. Now the scenario worth designing the bill around. Example: you deliver 500 chairs against a ₹25,000 deposit and 468 come back at load-out. Thirty-two are short, and at a replacement value of ₹850 that is ₹27,200, which is ₹2,200 more than the deposit. If the client signed a delivery count, ₹2,200 is a clean line on the return challan. If nobody counted at delivery, the client says you sent 480, and now 12 chairs at ₹850, ₹10,200, is an argument you will probably lose on goodwill. The signed count at the venue is the whole defence. The Return Challan sheet in the Excel does this arithmetic for you.

Break labour, transport and generator out as separate lines instead of burying them in the pandal rate. A client haggles over one large rate. A line reading 14 men x ₹700 = ₹9,800 or 2 truck trips x ₹3,000 = ₹6,000 draws far less argument, and it lets you drop a line when you give a discount without re-pricing the pandal. The generator at ₹5,500 a day with diesel deserves its own line for another reason: diesel is the one cost that moves between the quote and the event. On this site's GST guide, tent and furniture rental sits under SAC 997354 and turnkey stage and decor work under SAC 998397, both at 18%. Whether fitting labour and transport ride on the rental as part of one supply is a call for your CA, which is why the sample leaves those two SAC cells unclassified instead of guessing.

On the sample, the taxable value is ₹1,13,000 after a ₹3,800 discount. Inside one state that is ₹10,170 CGST plus ₹10,170 SGST. Bill a client in another state and it becomes ₹20,340 IGST. The total stays ₹1,33,340 either way, which is why the Excel switches on one dropdown. The advance is a separate document. When the client pays ₹50,000 to lock the date, issue a receipt voucher under Section 31(3)(d) of the CGST Act, which this site's GST guide treats as attracting 18% on the advance, and quote its number on the final bill when you deduct the money. Corporate clients may also deduct TDS under Section 194-C, at 2% (1% if you are an individual or HUF), on bills above ₹30,000, or ₹1,00,000 across a year. Under CBDT Circular 23/2017, when GST is shown separately the TDS is worked on the value before GST, so 2% of ₹1,13,000 is ₹2,260, not 2% of ₹1,33,340.

Which file to use depends on how many bills you write in a month. Under ten, the Word bill printed and signed is enough, and its terms block does more work than any arithmetic. Past that, use the Excel: rental days come from the load-in and load-out dates, every amount is Qty x Days x Rate, and a mistyped total stops being possible. Number bills as TH, the financial year and a running count, so TH/2627/0148 is the 148th bill of 2026-27, and keep one workbook per financial year so the sequence never restarts by accident. The item column is bilingual, Item and विवरण, because the counter staff who fill it and the accountant who reads it rarely prefer the same language. Send the PDF on WhatsApp before the truck leaves the venue, while the client is still standing next to the counted material.

Run the load-out count like a checklist, not a chat. Stack chairs in tens so 50 stacks means 500 and a stack of nine shows from the truck. Count tablecloths separately from tables, since a table can be present with its cloth missing. Photograph any torn shamiana panel or bent truss leg against the bill number before it is loaded. Write the counts straight onto the return challan while the client is present and have them sign before the truck leaves the venue, not at the godown, because a signature collected two days later is a signature on your version of events. Ten minutes at the gate costs less than one disputed ₹850 chair multiplied by thirty-two.