Ledger Methods
dsGST offers two ways of turning your bills into accounting entries: Ledger (the original method) and New Ledger. Both are fully supported — choose the one that matches how you want your books to look. Your bills, receipts and vouchers are the same either way; only the accounting entries built from them differ.
How a Sale Bill Is Posted
Take a sale bill of ₹1,180 — ₹1,000 taxable value, ₹90 CGST, ₹90 SGST — billed to Party A.
Ledger
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Party A | 1,180 | |
| Sales | 1,180 |
The whole bill goes to Sales. GST is moved out of Sales into the GST accounts once a month, using the GST Posting Wizard, which passes one voucher for the month.
New Ledger
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Party A | 1,180 | |
| Sales | 1,000 | |
| Output CGST | 90 | |
| Output SGST | 90 |
Each bill is split as it's entered — taxable value to Sales, each tax to its own GST account, Cess to the Cess account, and any rounding difference to the Round Off account. Purchases, returns, and Credit / Debit Notes are split the same way, into the Input GST accounts for purchases. No monthly posting step is needed.
Which One to Choose
| Ledger | New Ledger | |
|---|---|---|
| Sales / Purchase account shows | Bill totals, including GST (until the month is posted) | Taxable value only |
| GST accounts are up to date | After the month's GST Posting | Immediately, bill by bill |
| GST entry detail | One voucher per month | Every bill, with its bill number |
| Cess and round off | Stay in Sales / Purchase | Posted to their own accounts |
| Monthly step | Run the GST Posting Wizard | None |
| Setup | GST Accounts | GST Accounts and Round Off accounts |
Choose New Ledger if you want Sales and Purchase to show net (taxable) values at all times, GST ledgers you can reconcile bill by bill against GST returns, or books that look like those of other accounting software — for example, if your accountant works from your Trial Balance through the year.
Stay with Ledger if you're used to the monthly GST posting and don't need the GST accounts current between postings, or if you're mid-year and have already passed GST Posting vouchers (see Switching below).
Setting It Up
-
Set the GST accounts, if you haven't already:
Auto Create and Set Accounts creates and sets them all. New Ledger needs every one of them — including Cess — since each bill posts straight to them.
-
Open Set Defaults:
Under Standard Accounts, set Round Off in Sale and Round Off in Purc, then tick Enable New Ledger and save.
-
Close and reopen dsGST — the method is picked when you log in. The status bar starts with NL- while New Ledger is in use.
New Ledger has already put GST into the GST accounts. Passing the monthly GST Posting voucher as well moves the same GST a second time, and your GST accounts, Sales and Purchase will all be wrong.
Switching
The method changes how all bills in the current year's data are posted — not just new ones — because dsGST builds the entries from the bills each time you open a ledger or report.
- Best time to switch: the start of a financial year, before any GST Posting voucher has been passed in the new period.
- Switching to New Ledger mid-year: first delete the GST Posting vouchers already passed this year (they're Multi Vouchers narrated GST Values for <month>), otherwise GST for those months is counted twice.
- Switching back to Ledger mid-year: run the GST Posting Wizard for every month of the year so far, or GST stays inside Sales and Purchase.
Either way, check the Trial Balance and a GST account ledger for a month you know before and after switching.