GST Invoice Format for Hotels

A GST invoice is not just a receipt for a guest’s stay. It is a legal tax document, and if it is missing a mandatory field or shows the wrong tax rate, it can cost you an ₹25,000 penalty per invoice and cost your corporate guest their input tax credit claim. This guide covers the invoice format itself: the fields a compliant GST invoice needs, the tax rates and HSN/SAC codes that apply to a hotel bill, and a free downloadable template you can start using today.

This page is about the invoice format specifically. If you are still setting up GST registration for your property, working out whether you need to register at all, or want the broader rules on applicability and thresholds, see our separate guide on GST for Homestays in India.

Whether you run a single homestay or a multi-property portfolio, the same core format applies; what changes across properties is mainly the tax rate and, for larger operations, whether e-invoicing is required.

What Makes a Hotel Invoice ‘GST-Compliant’

Under GST law, every registered hotel, homestay or resort must issue a tax invoice for accommodation and related services. Rule 46 of the Central GST Rules, 2017 sets out exactly what a tax invoice must contain. An invoice that is missing one of these fields, uses the wrong invoice number format, or applies the wrong tax rate is not a valid GST invoice, even if everything else about it looks professional.

This matters for two separate reasons. First, tax officers can penalise incorrect invoices directly. Second, if a corporate guest or travel agent wants to claim input tax credit on your bill, an invoice that does not meet the Rule 46 requirements can get that claim rejected, and the guest will come back to you asking for a corrected copy.

The 10 Mandatory Fields on Every GST Invoice

Rule 46 lists ten pieces of information that must appear on a valid tax invoice. Missing even one of these is the single most common reason an invoice gets rejected by an accountant or a tax officer.

1. Your GSTIN, legal name and registered address – the GSTIN must match exactly what is shown on the GST portal for your property, including the correct state code for the property’s location.
2. A unique invoice number and date – a sequential serial number of up to 16 characters, starting fresh each financial year (1 April to 31 March), with no gaps and no repeats within that year.
3. The guest or company’s name and address – for a corporate guest paying by company account and wanting to claim input tax credit, their GSTIN is also mandatory. For a guest paying personally, name and address are enough.
4. Place of supply – for hotel accommodation, this is always the location of the property itself, regardless of where the guest or the booking company is registered. This decides whether you charge CGST plus SGST, or IGST.
5. HSN or SAC code – the code that classifies exactly what you are billing for (room accommodation, restaurant service, laundry, and so on). See the HSN and SAC codes section below for the exact codes a hotel bill needs.
6. A clear description of what is being charged – “Room accommodation, 2 nights” or “Restaurant, room service” rather than a vague line like “Services.”
7. Taxable value – the amount the tax is calculated on, after any discount, and before GST is added.
8. GST rate and tax amount, split by tax type – CGST and SGST shown separately for an in-state guest, or IGST shown as a single line for an out-of-state or foreign guest, never combined into one unlabelled “GST” line.
9. Whether reverse charge applies – for the vast majority of hotel and homestay bookings this is “No,” since the property itself is the one liable to pay GST, but the field still has to be shown on the invoice.
10. Signature – a physical signature, a digital signature, or a digital signature certificate, on the invoice or a linked payment/settlement record.

How the September 2025 Rate Reform Changed the Rules

Before 22 September 2025, hotel accommodation GST slabs were tied to a hotel’s ‘declared tariff’, a published rate that a property registered with the tax authorities, rather than the price actually charged on a given booking. This meant a hotel could sell a room at a discount well below its declared tariff and still be taxed at the higher slab tied to that declared rate. It also meant mid-range hotels between roughly ₹1,000 and ₹7,500 in declared tariff often had a 12% slab with ITC available as an option alongside the non-ITC rate.

The September 2025 reform removed the declared-tariff concept entirely and tied the GST slab to the invoiced value, the price actually charged for that specific night’s stay. It also removed the 12%-with-ITC option for the ₹1,001 to ₹7,500 band, leaving 5% without ITC as the single mandatory rate for that band. For invoicing purposes, this means two things going forward: your invoice format no longer needs a ‘declared tariff’ reference field at all, and your billing software or bill book needs to calculate the rate fresh for every single invoice based on that booking’s actual price, not a rate looked up once and reused.

GST Rates on a Hotel Room Bill

The GST rate on your invoice depends on the actual room tariff you charge, not a rate card or a ‘declared tariff’ from a few years ago. Since the GST rate reform of 22 September 2025, the applicable slab is based on the price actually charged on that invoice for that night, so a discounted booking can genuinely fall into a lower slab than the room’s usual rate.

A practical example: if your standard room tariff is ₹8,000 but you sell a night at ₹6,500 through a festive discount, that invoice is taxed at 5%, not 18%, because the tax follows the actual invoiced price for that transaction, not the room’s usual rate.

HSN and SAC Codes for a Hotel Bill

A hotel bill usually covers more than one kind of service, and each one has its own code.

Whether you show the code as 4 digits or 6 digits depends on your aggregate turnover in the previous financial year: 4-digit HSN/SAC codes are enough if your turnover was up to ₹5 crore, and 6-digit codes are mandatory above ₹5 crore. Most independent hotels and homestays fall in the 4-digit bracket, but it is worth checking your own turnover figure each year rather than assuming.

The ‘Specified Premises’ Rule and Your Restaurant Bill

If your hotel has a restaurant, in-room dining or a banquet kitchen, one more rule affects the tax rate on that part of the bill: whether your property counts as a ‘specified premises’ for the financial year.

A property becomes a ‘specified premises’ for a financial year in one of two ways. Automatically, if any unit or room in the property was actually charged more than ₹7,500 per night at any point in the preceding financial year. Or voluntarily, by filing a declaration: an already-registered hotel files Annexure VII between 1 January and 31 March of the preceding year, and a newly registered hotel files Annexure VIII within 15 days of getting its GST registration acknowledgment.

The reason this matters for your invoice: at a specified premises, restaurant and room service charges are taxed at 18% with full input tax credit. At a property that is not a specified premises, the same restaurant and room service charges are taxed at 5% with no input tax credit. This is a separate rate decision from whatever your room accommodation is taxed at. A mid-range hotel charging ₹6,000 a night, with no room ever crossing ₹7,500 in the previous year, stays a non-specified property with its restaurant also at 5%. A premium property that crossed ₹7,500 on even one room in the previous year is 18% with ITC on its entire restaurant turnover for the current year, regardless of what any individual room is priced at now.

One Guest, One Bill, Different Tax Rates

A common invoicing mistake is applying the room’s tax rate to the entire bill. A single guest folio might need three different rates on three different lines: the room itself at 5% or 18% depending on the tariff band, restaurant or room service food at 5% or 18% depending on whether the property is a ‘specified premises’ (a property where any room was billed above ₹7,500 a night in the previous financial year, or that voluntarily opted in through the Annexure VII or VIII declaration), and something like a spa treatment or airport transfer at whatever rate applies to that specific service category. Each line item should be billed under its own SAC code and its own rate, not folded into a single ‘accommodation charges’ line at the room’s rate.

A Worked Example: Reading a Full Guest Folio

Here is how the rates and codes above come together on an actual bill, for a guest staying 2 nights at a property that is not a specified premises this year (no room in the property crossed ₹7,500 a night in the previous financial year):

Both lines happen to land at 5% here only because the property is not a specified premises this year. If the same property had crossed ₹7,500 on any room in the previous financial year, it would be a specified premises for this year, and the restaurant row would move to 18% with ITC while the room row stayed at whatever its own tariff band decided, since the two rates are worked out independently, line by line.

B2B and B2C Invoices: What Actually Changes

The mandatory fields are the same for every guest, but two things differ for a business guest claiming input tax credit. First, the invoice must show the company’s GSTIN, not just its name and address; without the GSTIN, the company cannot claim ITC on the stay at all. Second, it is worth double-checking the place of supply field before finalising a corporate booking, since it decides whether the invoice needs CGST plus SGST or a single IGST line, and getting this wrong is one of the more common reasons a corporate finance team sends a bill back for correction.

Do You Need E-Invoicing?

E-invoicing, where an invoice is reported electronically to the government portal and gets a unique Invoice Reference Number (IRN) and QR code before it is considered valid, is mandatory only once a business’s aggregate turnover has crossed ₹5 crore in any financial year from 2017-18 onwards, and this threshold has stayed at ₹5 crore through 2026 with no official reduction. Once a business crosses ₹5 crore in any year, e-invoicing stays mandatory for it going forward even if turnover later drops back below that figure.

Most independent hotels and homestays are well under this threshold and can issue a standard tax invoice without an IRN or QR code. If you run a hotel group or a larger property whose combined turnover across GST registrations is approaching ₹5 crore, it is worth checking with your accountant now rather than after you cross the line, since e-invoicing needs to be switched on through GST-approved billing software.

Invoicing a Guest Who Books Directly by Phone or WhatsApp

A direct booking, whether confirmed over a phone call or through a WhatsApp conversation, still needs the exact same tax invoice as a walk-in or an OTA booking; there is no lighter-weight invoice format for a booking that did not come through a formal channel. What changes in practice is how far in advance you can prepare the invoice: with a phone or WhatsApp booking you already know the guest’s name and the agreed tariff before arrival, so the invoice header, room details and tax rate can be filled in ahead of check-in, with only the final line items, any extra services used during the stay, added at checkout. This is one of the more common efficiency gains hotels see once they move direct bookings off a paper diary and onto a system that captures the details once, at the time of booking, rather than re-collecting them at the front desk.

GST on Cancellation and No-Show Charges

If you charge a cancellation fee or a no-show fee when a guest does not honour a booking, that fee is still treated as consideration for a service, agreeing to hold the room, and is subject to GST, generally taxed under the same accommodation rate structure a normal stay would have used, based on the room’s tariff band. This means a cancellation fee needs its own tax invoice too, with the same mandatory fields as a stay invoice, rather than being treated as an untaxed penalty outside the GST system.

A Ready-to-Use GST Invoice Template for Hotels

The downloadable template below is laid out as a single hotel folio invoice with every mandatory field in place. Here is what each section of it covers:

Common Mistakes That Make an Invoice Non-Compliant

• Charging 18% GST straight off a hotel’s ‘rack rate’ or listed tariff instead of the price actually invoiced for that stay
• Taxing the entire bill, including restaurant and spa charges, at the same rate as the room
• Reusing an invoice number from a previous financial year instead of restarting the sequence on 1 April
• Leaving out the guest company’s GSTIN on a corporate booking, which blocks their input tax credit claim entirely
• Showing a single combined ‘GST’ amount instead of splitting it into CGST and SGST, or IGST
• Applying the non-specified-premises 5% restaurant rate at a property that actually qualifies as a ‘specified premises’ for the year (any property with a room billed above ₹7,500 a night in the previous financial year, or one that voluntarily opted in), or the other way round
• Not updating invoice formats after a rate change, and continuing to bill at a slab that no longer applies

What Happens If an Invoice Is Wrong

Under Section 122 of the CGST Act, issuing an incorrect or incomplete tax invoice can attract a penalty of up to ₹25,000 per invoice. Beyond the direct penalty, an invoice that is missing a mandatory field or shows the wrong GSTIN can cause a corporate guest’s input tax credit claim to be rejected, and they will usually ask you for a corrected invoice, which means redoing the paperwork after the guest has already checked out. Getting the format right the first time avoids both problems.

Running More Than One Property? Each One Needs Its Own GSTIN

GST registration in India is state-wise, not business-wide. If you run properties in more than one state, for example a homestay in Goa and a second one in Himachal Pradesh, each property needs its own GST registration and its own GSTIN, because GST treats each state registration as a separate entity for compliance purposes. This means each property also needs its own invoice number series; you cannot share one sequential numbering series across two properties registered in different states, and the invoice header for each property must show that property’s own GSTIN, not a head-office GSTIN from a different state.

Two properties in the same state under one legal entity are usually covered by a single GSTIN, with each property’s invoice header simply carrying that property’s own trading name and address alongside the shared GSTIN. It is the state-wise separation that creates a genuinely separate registration, not the number of properties by itself.

Manual Bill Books vs Software-Generated Invoices

A handwritten or printed bill book can technically carry every Rule 46 field, and plenty of small homestays still use one. The practical risk is consistency: a manual book makes it easy to skip the CGST/SGST split under time pressure at checkout, to duplicate an invoice number by mistake, or to lose track of which financial year a number sequence last reached. None of these mistakes are intentional, they are simply easy to make by hand across hundreds of checkouts a year.

A software-generated invoice, whether from dedicated billing software or a property management system, removes most of this risk by calculating the tax split and enforcing the number sequence automatically. It also makes it far easier to search back through a full year of invoices if a guest, an accountant or a tax officer asks for a copy of a specific stay’s bill.

Issuing a Credit Note If You Made a Billing Mistake

If an invoice already issued turns out to have the wrong rate, the wrong taxable value, or needs a refund adjustment, for example a guest disputes a charge after checkout, the correct fix under GST is not to edit or reprint the original invoice. Instead, issue a credit note that references the original invoice number and date, explains the adjustment, and shows the corrected tax figures. This keeps your invoice number sequence intact and gives both you and the guest a clean paper trail if either of you needs to justify the correction later, whether to an auditor or to a corporate finance team processing an expense claim.

How Long to Keep Your GST Invoices

GST law requires you to retain copies of every invoice you issue for 72 months (6 years) from the due date of filing the annual return for that financial year, not 6 years from the invoice date itself. In practice this means invoices from early in a financial year need to be kept for longer than 6 years measured from the invoice date, so it is safer to think of retention in whole financial years rather than counting exactly 6 years from each invoice. Digital copies, stored as PDFs or within your billing software, satisfy this requirement just as well as paper copies, and are considerably easier to search when a specific invoice needs to be pulled up for a tax audit or a guest’s expense claim.

Rounding and Currency on the Invoice

GST invoices are issued in Indian rupees, and the total tax payable is rounded off to the nearest rupee under GST rules, using normal rounding rather than always rounding up or always rounding down. Individual tax lines like CGST and SGST are typically shown to two decimal places for transparency before the final total is rounded, exactly as in the worked example above, where the CGST and SGST lines carry paise while the guest ultimately pays a rounded total.

A Quick Checklist Before Your First Invoice Goes Out

1. Confirm your GSTIN is active and correctly linked to this property’s address on the GST portal, not a different property or an old address.
2. Decide your invoice number format and starting number for the financial year, and write it down somewhere your whole front desk team can see, not just in one person’s head.
3. Confirm whether your property is a ‘specified premises’ for this financial year (any room billed above ₹7,500 a night in the previous financial year, or a voluntary opt-in through Annexure VII, filed 1 January to 31 March of the preceding year for existing hotels, or Annexure VIII, filed within 15 days of registration for new ones), since this decides your restaurant’s GST rate for the whole year.
4. Set up separate line items and SAC codes in your billing software or bill book for room accommodation (996311) and restaurant or room service (996331), rather than one blended accommodation line.
5. Check your aggregate turnover figure for HSN/SAC digit requirements (4-digit codes up to ₹5 crore, 6-digit above) and for e-invoicing applicability (mandatory above ₹5 crore).
6. Brief front desk and accounts staff on asking for a company GSTIN at check-in for corporate bookings, not after the guest has already checked out.

How This Plays Out at Different Property Types

How OpenStays Fits Into This

OpenStays generates a compliant invoice automatically for every booking it processes, whether the guest books direct through your WhatsApp AI concierge or walks in and pays at the front desk. Each invoice carries your GSTIN, a sequential invoice number that resets correctly at the start of the financial year, the right SAC code per line item, and the CGST/SGST or IGST split based on the guest’s state, so front desk staff are not manually deciding which rate applies to which line.

Because OpenStays holds your room tariffs and booking history, it can also flag when a property’s room pricing crosses the ₹7,500 threshold during the year, which is the detail that determines specified-premises status and your restaurant’s tax rate for the following year, a detail that is easy to lose track of manually across a full year of bookings.

For payments, OpenStays settles UPI and direct-to-bank payments straight to your account with no escrow and no platform-held TDS or GST, so the tax you show on the guest invoice is the tax that actually needs to reach the government, not a figure complicated by a third-party payment layer.

At tax filing time, OpenStays exports a full, invoice-by-invoice ledger for the period, already split by GST rate and SAC code, so reconciling your GSTR-1 outward supply return against actual guest folios does not mean re-adding up a stack of paper bills by hand.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do homestays need to follow the same GST invoice format as hotels?

Yes. Any GST-registered homestay, guest house or resort follows the same Rule 46 requirements as a hotel; the format does not change by property type, only the tax rate can differ depending on the room tariff.

What if my room tariff changes every day depending on demand?

That is fine and common with dynamic pricing. The GST rate is decided invoice by invoice, based on the actual price charged for that specific night, so different invoices on different days can genuinely fall into different rate bands.

Is GST charged on a security deposit collected at check-in?

No, a refundable security deposit is not a payment for a service and is not taxed. GST applies once the deposit (or part of it) is adjusted against an actual charge, such as damage or a mini-bar bill, at which point that adjusted amount is invoiced and taxed like any other service.

Do I need to show GST separately if my guest paid a lump sum through an OTA?

Yes. Even when a guest has already paid a booking platform, the tax invoice from your property still needs to show the taxable value and GST breakup for the stay; the OTA’s own commission invoice to you is a separate, different transaction.

Can I use one invoice number series for the whole year across all room types?

Yes, a single sequential series is simplest and is what Rule 46 expects; you do not need separate number series per room type or per season, only a fresh series each financial year.

What happens if a guest asks for the invoice after they have already checked out?

You can still issue it; there is no rule against issuing a tax invoice after departure, though it is good practice to issue it promptly, generally within a few days, since a delayed invoice makes tracking your own invoice sequence harder and can hold up a corporate guest’s expense claim.

Does a service charge on the bill affect the GST calculation?

If you charge a service charge as a percentage on food and beverage, it becomes part of the taxable value for that line before GST is calculated, so it should be added in before applying the restaurant’s GST rate, not billed as a separate untaxed line.

Is a scanned or WhatsApp-sent invoice copy valid, or does the guest need a printed original?

A digitally sent invoice, including a PDF shared over WhatsApp or email, is valid as long as it carries the mandatory fields and a valid signature (physical, scanned, or digital); there is no requirement for a printed paper original.

Is there a difference between a ‘tax invoice’ and a ‘bill of supply’?

Yes. A bill of supply is used only when no GST is charged at all, for example a room priced at ₹900 a night, which falls under the nil-rated band. The moment any GST applies to the stay, even at 5%, a full tax invoice with all 10 mandatory fields is required instead of a bill of supply.

Does the GST rate change if the guest is a foreign tourist paying in a foreign currency?

No, the room tariff band and GST rate work the same way regardless of the guest’s nationality or currency; a foreign guest is billed exactly like a domestic one, converted to Indian rupees for the invoice at the rate actually charged.

Do I need a rubber stamp on the invoice, or is a printed signature line enough?

A printed name with a physical or digital signature is enough; there is no requirement for a rubber stamp specifically, as long as the signature itself, physical or digital, is genuinely present on the document.

I list my homestay on Airbnb or a similar marketplace that collects payment from the guest. Do I still need to issue my own GST invoice?

Yes. The marketplace collecting payment on your behalf does not replace your own tax invoice to the guest for the accommodation service; you still issue a GST invoice from your own GSTIN for the stay, separate from any commission invoice the marketplace sends you.

In Summary

A GST-compliant hotel invoice comes down to getting three things right on every bill: the 10 mandatory Rule 46 fields, the correct GST rate for each line item based on what was actually charged, and the right HSN/SAC code for each service. Room accommodation and restaurant service are taxed separately and can carry different rates, especially once specified-premises status is involved, so a single blanket rate across the whole folio is one of the fastest ways to end up with an invoice that will not hold up to a GST audit or a corporate guest’s ITC claim. The downloadable template above is a practical starting point; adapt it with your own GSTIN, numbering and branding, and treat this page as the format reference to double check it against.

This guide is for general information and reflects GST rates and rules in effect as of August 2026. GST rates, thresholds and rules can change; for advice specific to your property, especially around specified-premises declarations or e-invoicing setup, consult a chartered accountant or GST practitioner.