Do you have an integrated software to deal with your procurement to pay process? Is your supply chain as proficient and accurate as you'd like? If not, you might be missing a chance to ensure quick delivery times, better productivity, economies of scale, and lower overall costs. Procurement software can help you to ensure the most gainful decisions in your procurement processes. 

How to Select the Best Procurement Software: A Handy Guide

- What Is Procurement Software?

- Types of Procurement Software

- Features of Procurement Software

- Benefits of Procurement Software

- Best Procurement Software in the Market

1. Procurify Software
2. TYASuite Procurement to Pay Software
3. Precoro Software
4. Promena e-Sourcing
5. Kissflow Procurement Cloud
6. Fraxion Spend Management

- Conclusion

What Is Procurement Software?

Procurement to pay software helps you to issue Purchase orders for services and products and monitor all key order information in real-time including purchase quantities, vendor, delivery timeframes, product or service purchased, payment terms, and costs. Many Procurement software also helps you management the requirements from the user department and helps you automate the Purhcase Order process as well.

Types of Procurement Software

The best procurement software is available on the market in a number of different varieties. Despite the significant differences in each software's functioning, the majority refer to it as procurement software.

Procurement software is also known as purchase order software, you can assure that every order is authorized, legitimate, and trackable. By connecting your procurement process to inventory control, you can get accurate stock quantities, seasonal trends, movement history, and supplier lead times.

Another type of best procurement software is procure-to-pay software, which connects your purchasing department with your accounts payable department. This will help to simplify your organization's purchasing supply chain.

Third kind of procurement software links your entire procurement to vendor and manages your vendors as well. SAP Ariba, TYASuite Supplier Management Software are the few software which exists in the world which helps manages end to end procurement and supplier management.

Key Features of Procurement Software

Benefits of Procurement Software

1. You can share and collaborate internally
2. Share and collaborate with suppliers/vendors on a single platform
3. You can regulate procurement processes within your company
4. Track events and receive alerts
5. Investigate the business intelligence data to gain information into the procurement process so that you can estimate and plan accordingly
6. Minimize operational and logistics costs
7. Eliminate Manual process and manual errors

Top Rated Best Procurement Software in the Market

Procurify Software

Procurify is one of the cloud-based procurement to pay solutions that help businesses manage, track, and control spend. Businesses can centralize all purchasing data while allowing teammates to do their purchasing.

This real-time solution helps users build, track, and report on all requisitions, POs (purchase orders) and expenses. The purchaseorder processing system is structured to provide a user experience similar to online shopping and offers integrations i.e. Amazon Punch-out. 

TYASuite Procurement to Pay Software

TYASuite is a cloud-based e-procurement software created to help businesses manage and simplify the whole supply chain lifecycle, from raw material procurement to sales order distribution. Experts can leverage artificial intelligence technology to estimate project profitability, build and assign tasks to particular users, and receive automated reminders of project updates. 

Features of TYASuite include end to end procurement lifecycle from Purchase Requisition to Payments to vendors including expense tracking, access control, inbuilt work flows and approval flows, returns management, data import/export, collaboration, and more. IT also helps end to end vendor management form vendor onboarding, request for proposal (RFP), request for information (RFI), request for quotation (RFQ), and e-auction solutions, reverse bidding and many more. TYASuite is India?s 1^st Supplier Management Platform which is interested into its Procurement software to give a complete end to end package to your company. What best is you can go live within 7 days in your company with their plug and play features.

Precoro Software

Precoro is a cloud-based purchasing tool that simplifies procurement processes for small and medium-sized organizations. Key features include the creation of purchase order and delivery, billing, visual analytics on spends by departments, receiving, real-time budgeting, three-way matching, and catalog management long with product links.

Precoro enables users to design purchase requests, receive purchase orders, and set automated approval routing. Precoro?s vendor management tool stores supplier data including contact information, addresses, and payment terms that help users in creating purchase orders.

Promena e-Sourcing

Promena e-Sourcing is an organized cloud-based procurement, sourcing, and auction management software. It enables strategic solutions, such as a request for proposal (RFP), request for information (RFI), request for quotation (RFQ), and e-auction solutions.

Promena e-Sourcing help users to push purchasing exercises to the cloud. Its e-Tender and e-Auction modules create a transparent and simplified purchasing environment for users as well as prospective customers.

Kissflow Procurement

Kissflow Procurement software is ideal for businesses that are either transitioning from manual procurement management modules, implementing a solution for the first time, or replacing disparate point solutions. With Kissflow, organizations can reduce guesswork and make better, quicker, and smarter purchasing decisions. Kissflow is less of a procurement software but more of approval work flow platform.

Fraxion Spend Management

Fraxion gives complete procurement solutions for purchase requisitioning, spend management, expense management, and spend analysis.

The solution helps mobile purchase requisition-to-purchase order features with advanced approval routing, invoice approval, quoting, and 3-way matching abilities.

Conclusion - 

The ideal way to start your search is by checking out the features and benefits of top procurement platforms. You can do this by signing up for the free demo offered by leading procurement to pay software providers like TYASuite. 

At TYASuite, we offer end to end best procurement software that can enable any business to boost its profit. TYASuite Cloud procurement module is a World 1st Plug and Play procurement software. It has a lot of pre-customized features that can be modified to suit your requirement in the click of a button.

When the market is flooded with a lot of solutions for businesses of all shapes and sizes, it becomes challenging for CIOs to zero in on the best ERP Software for consistent and robust management of its resources and operations.

The decision to choose the best ERP software for your business is a task no less difficult than finding the right partner for marriage. Whether you are the CIO of a big enterprise or the managing director of a growing small or mid-sized business (SMB), there is no scope to err in zeroing in on the best ERP software for your business.

The stakes are high and the implications of any wrong move are hazardous to the overall health of the business. We have seen many businesses have lost years of time and money before they could realize that they have selected the wrong ERP. Hence, it is best to be prudent while making ERP selection.

Here are a few suggestions that can help you to navigate your way towards selecting the best ERP software from the multitude of options available in the market, many of which may not understand the language that your business processes talk in.

1. Know Your Requirements

Before venturing out on the search of an ERP solution, it is important that you first ascertain the areas of your business that are ailing and need a cure. In simple words, identify the pain points that are pulling your business down, and also list down areas of your business that you would want to be streamlined via process integration and automation. Defining requirements helps in mapping the expectations with features and functionalities that the different ERP software is offering. Selecting the best ERP solution for your business thereafter becomes an easier proposition.

2. Understand Your Business Ambitions and Growth Plan

The 2^ndstep shall be to understand the business ambitions and growth plans. ERP is always a long-term decision. You don’t change ERP software every now and then. ERP must be able to fulfil your current pain points as well as your future growth ambitions.

3. Zero in On On-Premise or Cloud ERP

Ascertain if you should opt for an on-premise ERP solution, where the ERP software and the necessary hardware to deploy the software resides inside your organization premises, or a SaaS (software as a service) based solution, which is delivered via the Internet as a service.

While on-premise ERP software may serve well for organizations that can afford the hardware cost and continuous monitoring cost for the software and where the number of ERP users is likely to be very high (1000 plus users). Cloud ERP is a boon for small businesses and mid-sized businesses, who otherwise are wary of deploying ERP software for the sheer upfront cost that it entails. Since cloud ERP solutions are provided as a service over the cloud/Internet, the ERP vendor is responsible for related responsibilities such as product upgrades, data backup, and security, on an ongoing basis. For companies with limited IT budgets, a cloud ERP works the best as the upfront investment required to deploy the cloud ERP is negligible and the users are required to only pay for what they use. Apart from this, a cloud ERP software frees organizations from the hassle of having a brigade of expensive IT staff to manage the ERP system as the cloud vendor provides for this support too.

4. Compare flexibility to Move to On-premise in Future

As discussed above, once you grow, you may want to move to the ERP from cloud to on-premise. It is important to understand the Database Structure of the cloud ERP. ERP Provider may have the option of a Consolidated Database for all clients and in those cases, they will not be able to give you options to shift on-premise in the future. If the ERP Vendor has a multi-tenancy single company database structure, they will be able to give the same to you in the future.

5. Database Back-up Options

This is very critical to know if your ERP Vendors can give you the periodical back of your database. The database may be SQL or Oracle Database or other database structures. This can save you in the future when you decide to part ways with the ERP Vendors. If the database back is not with you, you will be significantly stuck with them for a lifetime even after terminating as you will be depending on them on access to your historical data.

6. Compare ERP Solutions

It is important to explore solutions that match your budget and requirements and then compare them at length on parameters such as cost and product fitment with business processes. It helps to patiently see the product demos carefully and ask the correct questions from the vendor to ascertain the product fitment. Based on this process, shortlist a few solutions that seem closest to meeting your expectations and then evaluate them on other critical parameters as discussed ahead. If you lack individuals with the skill to do this task, effectively, it works well to even hire an ERP consultant to help you in this best ERP software selection process.

7. Consult Existing Customers of the Shortlisted ERP Vendors

It always helps to check the worthiness of the shortlisted ERP solutions by referring to existing customers, preferably from your line of business, who are using these solutions. Their feedback on the ERP software and the vendor services and support can provide you with extremely useful insights about the solution, which you may never be able to get from the vendor or the product demo. This experience may change the course of your exploration and save you from making the wrong choice.

8. Ensure That the ERP Solution is Flexible

The ERP software under consideration must provide you with the flexibility to pick and choose modules and pay per use, instead of charging you for a pre-bundled ERP suite. In the latter case, you may end up spending on modules that you may never put to any use. Further, ERP Software must be flexible and customizable to your requirements. You don’t want to get stuck with ERPs which can not be customized to your future requirements.

9. Look for a Solution That's Elastic and Scalable

It always pays to deploy a solution that allows organizations to scale up and down the ERP usage as per their cash flows and business requirements. Cloud-based ERP systems are an ideal choice in case you have limited budgets for process automation, and where you want to keep the control to decide on the IT expenditure in your hands. A cloud-based ERP solution allows you to pay in an elastic mode as the solution is offered via a pay-as-you-use model.

10. Select an Industry-specific Solution

Every trade has its nuances. If these niche elements of the business come as part of the ERP features, it saves time and effort in going live with the system as minimal customization is required in the case of industry-specific solutions. Hence, look for vendors who ship a solution, meant especially for your industry than picking a generic solution, off-the-shelf.

11. Choose a Solution That Includes Best Industry Practices

Don't look for a solution that matches your legacy way of functioning; instead try and adopt a solution that offers the best practices of some of the best businesses in your trade, globally. It is always good to incorporate the best practices of the trade you are in if you have aspirations to diversify, expand, and collaborate with overseas organizations.

12. Deploy a Solution That Allows Integration With Other Software:

The best ERP solution is the one that allows integration with other software and platform such as business analytic software, CRM, mobile gateways, and so on. Furthermore, it is good to choose a vendor that provides a plethora of other such tools so that you discover all business services under one roof.

13. Implementation Time

Many ERP vendors have taken months and quarters to implement your software. In this dynamic world, you don’t want to wait for 6- 9 months before going live and then find yourself not suitable. Plug and Play ERP is the future. Try for vendors that can go live in weeks and not in quarters.

14. Ensure the ERP Software Has A Simple User-Interface

Last but not the least, it is important to ensure that the ERP software doesn't come across as a complicated piece of technology that your employees hate to use. For enjoying the benefits of process automation, It is important to ensure that the solution has a simple user interface and the process to accomplish a single task through the software is not long-winding. If the user interface is complex, the effort required to train users becomes strenuous, which may in turn lead to resistance for the newly deployed system and in some cases, even in the failure of the ERP implementation.

At TYASuite, we offer end to end ERP software that can enable any business to boost its profit. TYASuite Cloud ERP is a World 1st Plug and Play ERP Solutions. It has a lot of pre-customized features that can be modified to suit your requirement in the click of a button.

Automation has become a key buzz world these days. Cloud is new normal in digital world.

A lot of businesses are getting more involved in automating their process through business process standardization and implementing cloud ERP.

Here, we have described a list of frequently asked questions / FAQs in implementing ERP software.

1. What is ERP Software?

ERP or Enterprise Resources Planning software originated from the term Material Resource Planning (MRP) and later on became Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) during the 80s. In the starting, the intrigue generally is from the manufacturing and distribution parts. During the 90s, different sellers have stretched out MRP to bookkeeping, Human Resources (HR), and different capacities that advanced to the term ERP which is an enterprise-based solution in automating a business.

The sample list of modules provided in ERP is procurement software, warehousing, inventory management ERP, general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, manufacturing ERP, job order, production planning, payroll, HRIS, and financial statements.

Some ERP clients get confused on these modules that on occasion they search for front-end software inside the ERP bundle. This front-end software like Hotel Management, CRM, and POS are autonomous modules but a few sellers package it as a solution to a vertical industry.

2. How Can I Improve My Business Using ERP?

A focused cloud ERP software has numerous points of interest for its clients. From reducing expenses to a surge in the efficiency in a powerful way, everything can be taken care of appropriately through an ERP system. Thus, by smoothing out the cycle it can help organizations to get a competitive edge over to their competitions.

3. What Are the Modules of ERP?

An ERP software has a lot of modules through which it helps companies in providing a real-time update and monitor of all the processes of their business. The numerous modules are an asset management software, inventory management software, procurement to pay management software, compliance management software, vendor management software, sales order management software, CRM software, finance & accounting management software.

4. What Does Our Business Need to Prepare When We Implement ERP?

The absolute initial phase in getting ready in implementing an ERP system is a preparation of solid business procedure document. The authoritative chart ought to be all around characterized, the different tasks of each feature, and the cycle documentation/responsibility.

When the above is set up, the subsequent stage is to Identify a SPOC who will deal with the ERP Implementation project in your company. The SPOC can emerge internally or through a third-party service provider. Their job will be the interface between the management, end-users, and the ERP Software Provider.

They will likewise be responsible for closing down important charts of records, vendor listing, client posting, SKUs, reports or yield expected by the partners, the accountability form design, and the arrangement all in all dependent on the association's cycle. This team will likewise deal with the UAT and test-to-creation milestone.

5. What Is the Required Timeframe Implementing an ERP?

The time of implementation fluctuates relying upon the modules being actualized. Further, the timelines depend on the ERP Software, ERP Vendor, ERP Implementation partner and your own readiness. It can take anywhere from months to quarters. If you have selected a Plug and Play ERP like TYASuite, their team can implement as early as one Week if your process and masters are ready.

Some implementations take a year or all the more particularly if the association has developing necessities, fragmented or erroneous data provided, or potentially management changes.

But this can be abbreviated by having a solid connection between the internal controlling council and the service provider. Both ought to have a powerful foundation and involvement with implementing ERP.

6. What Is the Difference Between On-Premise ERP and Cloud-based ERP?

On-premise is the conventional licensing model where the client gains the license per user or organization installed in the client's office website or premises. After a specific period relying upon the course of action with the service provider, the customer goes through a support system that guarantees upgrades and backing for questions or issues that will emerge when the client is utilizing it live. Both customer servers and online platforms offer the on-premise model.

Cloud-based ERP is a subscription-based software where the user pays for the service yearly, monthly, or quarterly per user. The recurring payment must include the maintenance or support agreement. Only Cloud ERP products can provide SAAS based model.

Both models have their pros and cons. This will all rely on the adaptability and flexibility that the user needs from the software. However, the world is going towards cloud ERP.

7. Can I Migrate Our Old or Historical Data?

Data migration and transfer of historical data are normally settled upon with the service provider amid the pre-selling stage. At TYASuite, we can focus on migrating the master data list for example users, inventory items, chart of accounts, and starting balances not the transactions. But actually, it's feasible.

8. Are There Any Hidden Costs?

Hidden costs all rely upon how the tool that the ERP Vendor showcase their product and service. But regularly, highlight requests that are not analyzed during the requirements gathering stage will be dependent upon customization expenses. Consequently, it is significant the user and the ERP Vendor have a thorough list of the prerequisite during the signing of the contract.

9. Can We Simply Integrate With Our Front-End or Any Third-Party Software?

Solutions accessible in the market typically have their APIs accessible in incorporating with other software or database. The integration success all relies upon the responsibility kind of ERP Software and the ERP Vendor and the participation of the third-party tool in giving important data or documentation throughout the integration development.

10. How Do We Choose An ERP Framework That Best Suits Us?

Since the association's function requirements are less or more in the wake of setting up the business cycle and documentation, the organization must already be prepared in setting up the prerequisites in detail. Some call this as Business Requirement Document (BRD). These are given to the ERP Vendor where they provide input if the Process is accessible in their ERP Software and if not accessible, then is their ERP software is a customizable ERP.

When all the offers are gathered, the organization currently ought to have an end to end correlation dependent on the administration's criteria, for example, supplier's maturity, client base, and dependability.

At TYASuite, we provide end to end ERP solution that can help any business to maximize its profit and productivity. If you are a startup, small- or large-scale business expecting a boost in your business, TYASuite can be the one-stop solution for you.

TYASuite Cloud ERP is a World 1^st Plug and Play ERP Solutions. It has a lot of pre-customized features that can be modified to suit your requirement in the click of a button.

The compliance management software has paved the way for an integrated approach to the numerous compliance issues faced by any organization. Previously, the compliance management processes were done at department levels. With the industries going worldwide and user groups spread globally, these compliance initiatives have become complicated with regulatory and organizational needs. This system brings down the productivity of the business and poses a broad risk to its existence.

Let us look at the various advantage of a Compliance Management Software

Compliance officials waste their time browsing for data to ensure organizational compliance. Compliance management software can automate the tedious processes of data collection, transmission, communication, knowledge sharing, decision-making, and monitoring changes in compliance regulations and integrating it into the entire system. Here’s a list of why businesses require to invest in and utilize compliance management software:

1. Decreased Legal Issues

This is one of the benefits of compliance management software. Every business needs to follow certain financial, legal, environmental, corporate, institutional, social, and government regulations and frameworks to be able to operate and prevent lawsuits, penalties, and fines. There also should be a stabilized platform to enforce these compliance regulations, as policies only earn power if they are implemented and enforced to the fullest extent. An integrated compliance management software guarantees that these compliance regulations are completely integrated across all locations and applicable laws and that no gaps are left open for crises or risks to slip through.

2. Stimulate Educated and Compliant Decision-making

With compliance management software, it will be simpler to make decisions where the organization’s financial and legal integrity are at stake. A compliance management software enables escalate these strategies to the system and authorize it to the officials involved so they can be resolved instantly.

3. Compliance Reporting

Compliance management software should be competent in generating an array of data extracts and compliance reports and guarantee that these are packaged adequately to be actionable by upper management. The reports should also be handily customizable and filtered to assure reliability.

4. Document Controlling

Some compliance management software features the ability to promote better document controlling, which encompasses the responsible management of forms, records, and documents that business releases or receive.

5. Compliance Process Management

Any business needs to strive for lasting improvement. Some compliance platforms have functionality for managing, owning, remapping, and analysing compliance processes while making the management activity integrated, seamless, and collaborative.

6. Compliance Work Flow

A good compliance management software helps in setting up an automated compliance workflow system in the organization. Individual compliances can be assigned to team members and team leaders. A central system will help the information flow from the bottom to the top of the organization.

7. Better Risk Management

Compliance management software helps organizations to manage their risk properly. Integrated Software across all locations and multiple laws will ensure that no compliances slip through the cracks and organizations are able to manage their risk on a real-time basis.

8. Complete Control on Due Dates

The business world is very dynamic. There are 1000s of compliance companies are required to do. Each compliance will have different compliance due date. Compliance due dates keep changing due to government regulations. It is critical for an organization to be on top of the latest compliance due dates. For example, In India, there is a different Due date for TDS Return fillings, GST Return fillings, PF Return fillings, etc. Good compliance management software will ensure that you are always in control of your latest due date.

Have a glance at TYASuite Compliance Management Software that is specially designed for organizations across size and jurisdiction. TYASuite Compliance Management Software lets you sit back and get all your compliance-related work done from one integrated platform.

Give your compliance management a new way; help your business optimize its efficiency and get a free demo with TYASuite Cloud Compliance Management Software! TYASuite is a Plug and Play ERP through which you can go live within 7 days.

Due to ever changing due dates of GSTR 3B return fillings and relaxations given by the government from payments of GST liability and interest there upon, there is always a confusion on how to calculate the interest on GST Liability.

Interest on GST on Net Tax liability

The key question to answer is “whether the interest should be charged on the Gross Liability or the Net Tax Liability if the GSTR 3B is not filed on time”.

The provision of interest on late payment of GST liability is enumerated in section 50(1) of CGST Act, 2017. The provision is reproduced hereunder for convenient reading.

As per Section 50(1) of the Act:

“Every person who is liable to pay tax in accordance with the provisions of this Act or the rules made thereunder, but fails to pay the tax or any part thereof to the Government within the period prescribed, shall, for the period for which the tax or any part thereof remains unpaid, pay, on his own, interest at such rate, not exceeding eighteen per cent, as may be notified by the Government, on the recommendation of the Council.”

The above provision of the Act was not clear to tax authorities whether the Interest shall be levied on Gross Liability or net liability. Based on this, there was unrest among business communities as tax authorities started demanding interest on Gross GST Liability.

Considering the pain points of the taxpayers on Interest on Gross Liability or Net Liability, the Finance (No. 2) Act, (23 of 2019) vide clause 100 proposed to amend section 50 by inserting following proviso to section 50(1) of CGST Act, 2017.

“Provided that the interest on tax payable in respect of supplies made during a tax period and declared in the return for the said period furnished after the due date in accordance with the provisions of section 39, except where such return is furnished after commencement of any proceedings under section 73 or section 74 in respect of the said period, shall be levied on that portion of the tax that is paid by debiting the electronic cash ledger.”

The above proviso was in the best interest of the taxpayers as it made it clear that the interest shall be calculated only on Net GST Liability i.e. only that portion which was paid through cash ledger. However, it was released late and in the notification No. 63/2020 dated August 25^th 2020, it was made applicable only prospectively effective August 25^th 2020.

Which again made the taxpayers worried on the past months implications as there were lot of demand notices from department for charging interest base don gross liability.

Fortunately, the CBIC provided further clarification to the above notification No. 63/2020 via Press release dated 26.08.2020 that this notification issued with prospective effect due to certain technical limitation and given an assurance that no recovery of interest shall be made on gross output tax liability for the period prior to 01-09-2020 by the State and Central Tax administration.

The above press release clears all doubts in the Act and now it is a settled rule that taxpayer shall not pay the interest on gross liability of GST but only on Net Liability of GST after setting of the Input credit.

Indian Business has to comply with gratuity regulations. On the top of payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, there are specific regulations enforced at state level in India. Example, certain states mandates creation of gratuity trust or subscribing to recognized gratuity trust fund plan.

Now let us look at various accounting and compliances aspects of the gratuity trust in India.

A. Formation of Gratuity Trust

1. Gratuity trust must be set up as an irrevocable trust
2. Gratuity trust must be set up for providing gratuity benefits to the employees trust to act as a separate legal entity.
3. Employer can appoint trustees for monitoring and administration of the fund
4. The trust must get an approval from under the Income Tax Act, 1961 to be recognized as approved gratuity trust.
5. Trustees can chose to manage the fund as per by laws of the trust. Common practice is to enter into a master policy with the insurance company to provide death-cum-retirement benefits to the employees.
6. All the monies contributed to the fund by the employer or received or accruing by way of interest or otherwise to the fund may be deposited in such separate bank account or utilized for making contribution to the group gratuity scheme under master policy entered into with the insurance company.
7. The amount not so deposited or unutilized money shall be invested in the manners prescribed in rules 67(2) and 101 of the income tax rules, 1962.
8. The gratuity trust shall provide for payment of gratuity on termination of service/employment, on death or retirement of the employee.

B. Ind AS Accounting for Gratuity Trust

Accounting of gratuity trust under Ind AS needs to be analyzed from standalone books of trust and the consolidation aspects along with employer. Let us first look at the Ind AS complexity related to gratuity trust. First questions come to mind is ?if the consolidation of gratuity trust requires to be done along with the employer financials?.

Analysis for Control Assessment and Consolidation

Ind AS 110 lays down the principles for presentation and preparation of consolidated financial statements when an entity controls another entity. It also defines the principles of control and establishes control as the basis for consolidation.

In order to determine control, we have to refer para 5, 6 and 7 of Ind AS 110, which are reproduced as under ?

Para 5 states that ? ?An investor, regardless of the nature of its involvement with an entity (the investee), shall determine whether it is a parent by assessing whether it controls the investee.?

Para 6 states that ??An investor controls an investee when it is exposed, or has rights, to variable returns from its involvement with the investee and has the ability to affect those returns through its power over the investee.?

Para 7 states that ? ?Thus, an investor controls an investee if and only if the investor has all the following:

1. Power over the investee (see paragraphs 10?14);
2. Exposure, or rights, to variable returns from its involvement with the investee (see paragraphs 15 and 16); and
3. The ability to use its power over the investee to affect the amount of the investor?s returns (see paragraphs 17 and 18)

Normally, the employer meets the conditions of para 7 (a) and (c). Further, the trust may not fit into criteria of para (b).

However, Ind AS has given a specific exemption for certain kind of trust for consolidation.

Paragraph 4(b) of Ind AS 110 states that ?This standard does not applies to post-employment benefit plans and other long-term employment benefit plans to which Ind AS 19 applies.

Since, the trust has been specifically formed to manage the gratuity compliance related to Employer and accordingly, the exemption granted under Ind AS 19 will apply.

Based on above it can be concluded that that there is no requirement to consolidate the trust in the financial statement of the employer.

C. Accounting of Gratuity Trust

In the Books of Employer

Employer will be making the annual contributions to the gratuity trust. At every reporting period, the employer needs to get an actuarial valuation done. Trust doesn?t require a separate gratuity valuation.

For accounting purposes, employer have to pass the below mentioned entries in their books of accounts:

Your actuary will give various information required in the above table for accounting entries.

Accounting In the Books of Gratuity Trust

In the books of trust, the main source of fund is the contributions received from employer. The fund will be applied towards contribution to insurance plan or some other approved investment. At the time of separation or retirement of an eligible employee, the gratuity amount is paid out of the trust fund to the employee.

Accounting entries in the books of the trust will be ?

D. Analysis for Income Tax Treatment

An approved gratuity trust will be treated as a separate legal entity under Income Tax Act. The trust would be assessable as an AOP as per clause (iv) to first proviso to section 164 (1). The trust must fulfills below conditions:

A. Trust must have a separate PAN card.

B. Trust must have a separate bank account with a scheduled bank (Rule 101) or deposit to group gratuity scheme with LIC or invested as per rule 67(2).

C. Separate books of accounts to be maintained ? rule 109(1)(c)

D. The trust must fulfill of conditions of part C of the fourth schedule of Income Tax Act, 1961.

1. It must be an irrevocable trust in connection with a business undertaking of employer in India, and not less than 90% of its employees are employed in India.
2. Employer must establish the trust exclusively for meeting the gratuity liability of its employees.
3. Employer must be a contributor to the fund.
4. All the benefits granted by the fund shall be payable only in India.

Further, as per section 10 (25)(iv) of the Income Tax Act, 1961, income received by the trust shall not be chargeable in the hands of trustee if the trust is an approved gratuity trust.

Tax Treatment in the Hands of the Trust - The contribution received from employer, normally will be treated as capital receipt and hence not liable to tax. If someone has to argue, that it is not a capital receipt but a revenue receipt, in that case the same will also be exempted u/s 10(25)(iv), as discussed above.

Further, any income received by the trust will also be exempt from tax u/s 10(25)(iv).

In the Hands of Employer ? The contribution to the approved gratuity trust will be treated as contribution by an employer to an approved gratuity trust for exclusive benefit of its employees and is an allowable deduction u/s 36(1)(v) of Income Tax Act, 1961.