Glossary¶
Applies to: All subscriptions
Purpose¶
This is the canonical Complifly glossary. Every term Complifly uses is defined here first. The in-product Help Centre and the internal engineering knowledge base each keep a glossary of their own, and both are translations of this one for a different reader — not independent definitions.
The rule, enforced by
tools/docs/terminology.js:
- A term that means the same thing to all three readers is defined here, and the other two restate it in their own register. Three registers, one meaning.
- A term that exists only for one reader — an internal component name, a screen affordance — lives only in that surface's glossary and is declared there.
- A term must never be introduced in a derived glossary. Vocabulary invented in one surface and never promoted here is how two teams end up using the same word for different things.
If a definition here is wrong, fix it here. Correcting only the copy you happened to be reading leaves two answers and no way to tell which is current.
Define every term this portal uses without further explanation. Several words carry a Complifly-specific meaning that differs from ordinary usage — promotion, quarantine, provenance and capability in particular. Reading those with their everyday meaning produces confident misunderstandings.
Audience¶
Everyone. Most useful to readers who know GST but are new to Complifly, and to technical readers who know software but are new to Indian indirect tax.
Prerequisites¶
None.
Reference¶
Statutory and government terms¶
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| GST | Goods and Services Tax — India's indirect tax regime |
| GSTIN | Goods and Services Tax Identification Number. A 15-character registration identifier. A business has one per state in which it is registered, so one legal entity commonly holds several |
| GSTN | Goods and Services Tax Network — the body operating the GST portal and registration data |
| NIC | National Informatics Centre — operates the e-Invoice and e-Way Bill systems |
| IRP | Invoice Registration Portal — the system that issues IRNs |
| IRN | Invoice Reference Number. A 64-character hash uniquely identifying a registered invoice. Issued once per supplier GSTIN, document type and document number, and never released, even if the invoice is later cancelled |
| Signed QR | The digitally signed QR code returned with an IRN. It is the evidence of registration and must appear on the printed document |
| Ack No / Ack Date | Acknowledgement number and date returned by the IRP alongside the IRN |
| e-Way Bill (EWB) | The document authorising movement of goods above a threshold value. Has a validity period based on distance |
| Part-A / Part-B | The two halves of an e-Way Bill. Part-A is the consignment; Part-B is the vehicle. A bill without Part-B is not valid for movement |
| CEWB | Consolidated e-Way Bill — a trip sheet grouping several bills onto one vehicle |
| HSN / SAC | Harmonised System of Nomenclature (goods) and Services Accounting Code (services). Classification codes carried on every line |
| Place of Supply (POS) | The state whose tax applies. Determines whether the supply is intra-state (CGST plus SGST) or inter-state (IGST) |
| Reverse charge (RCM) | The mechanism where the recipient, not the supplier, pays the tax |
| AATO | Aggregate Annual Turnover. Decides which statutory obligations apply, including the reporting window for e-invoices |
| Reporting window | The period after the document date within which an invoice must be reported to the IRP. Missing it is not recoverable in Complifly or anywhere else |
| TDS | Tax Deducted at Source — a direct-tax withholding obligation |
| TAN | Tax Deduction and Collection Account Number, used for TDS |
| FVU | File Validation Utility — the government tool that validates a TDS return before submission |
| TRACES | The government portal for TDS reconciliation, challans and certificates |
| DPDP | Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — India's data protection statute |
| Data principal | DPDP's term for the individual whose personal data is processed. The equivalent of GDPR's "data subject" |
| PAN | Permanent Account Number. Ten characters, and characters 3–12 of a GSTIN. A GSTIN whose embedded PAN does not match the one on file is a data error, not a registration problem |
| TCS | Tax Collected at Source — a direct-tax collection obligation, distinct from TDS, which is a deduction |
| Udyam | India's MSME registration. Verified for suppliers because statutory payment-term rules depend on MSME status |
| Fiscal year | April to March. 2026-05-25 falls in FY 2026-27. Document numbering resets on it, and a number reused across a boundary is a duplicate at NIC |
| IGST | Integrated GST — charged on inter-state supply, and on imports |
| CGST / SGST | Central and State GST — charged together on intra-state supply, half the rate each |
| UTGST | Union Territory GST — the SGST equivalent in a union territory without a legislature |
| Cess | An additional levy on specified goods, charged on top of GST at its own rate |
| Zero-rated | Exports and SEZ supplies. Taxable at nil rather than exempt, which is what preserves the input tax credit |
| Assessable value | The line value tax is computed on, after discounts and before tax |
| Round-off | The difference between the sum of the line taxes and the header total. It belongs in its own field; NIC rejects a header that does not reconcile |
| UQC | Unit Quantity Code — NIC's controlled vocabulary for units of measure (NOS, KGS, MTR). Free-text units are rejected, which is why unit mapping belongs in the mapping template |
| Supply type | B2B, B2C, SEZ with or without payment, export, deemed export. Decides which fields are mandatory on the document |
| Sub-supply type | The e-Way Bill classification of why goods are moving — supply, export, job work, and others. Independent of supply type |
| Document type | INV, CRN or DBN for e-invoice; a wider set including CHL, BIL and BOE for e-Way Bill. Decides which pipeline a document goes down |
Complifly terms¶
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| GSP | GST Suvidha Provider — a licensed intermediary through which Complifly reaches NIC and GSTN. Complifly is not itself a GSP |
| Provider / adapter | The code implementing one GSP's API. Two are live today: Webtel and Masters India |
| Capability | Whether a given provider can perform a given operation. Three states, not two: SUPPORTED, NOT_SUPPORTED (permanent — the provider has no such endpoint) and PENDING_VENDOR (temporary — requested from the vendor, not yet delivered). The distinction decides whether skipped work goes on a worklist to be redone later |
| Provenance | The stamp recording which GSP issued a given document. Follow-on actions — cancel, extend, update vehicle — must go back to that provider, not to whichever provider the tenant uses today. Without this, switching providers would break every document already in flight |
| Ingest | A document entering Complifly, by API or by file upload |
| Mapping template | The per-ERP rule set translating that ERP's field names, date formats and code values into the NIC envelope. Created once per integration |
| Quarantine | Where a document goes when validation fails. It is held, not discarded, and is visible in the Correction Cockpit |
| Correction Cockpit | The screen where quarantined documents are inspected and fixed |
| Promotion | Moving a corrected document out of quarantine into the live pipeline. Re-runs validation; a document that still fails returns to quarantine |
| Workbench | A working screen for a document family — IRN Workbench, EWB Doc Workbench, Invoice Workbench |
| Write-back | Sending compliance outcomes (IRN, e-Way Bill, cancellation) back to the originating ERP. Off by default and not retrospective |
| Outbox | The store of pending write-back events, with retry, circuit breaking and a dead-letter path |
| Maker / checker | The segregation-of-duties model: the person preparing a document is not the person committing it |
| SoD | Segregation of Duties. When enforcement is relaxed, maker and checker permissions collapse into one role |
| RLS | Row-Level Security. The database-level mechanism keeping one tenant's rows invisible to another. Its failure mode is silence — a wrongly scoped query returns zero rows and reports success |
| Scope | Which slice of data an identity may see. Complifly uses several scoping tiers — GSTIN, organisation, company and user — and they are not interchangeable |
| Feature flag | A per-GSTIN setting enabling a module or an automation |
| Help registry | The in-product help content, keyed on identifiers the application already emits — field names, error codes, statuses, permissions |
| IGM | Invoice Generation Module |
| Cockpit / Launchpad | Landing screens summarising outstanding work |
| Staging | The holding area an uploaded file lands in. Rows are validated there and then promoted or quarantined — nothing reaches the live pipeline unvalidated |
| Multi-vehicle | Splitting one e-Way Bill's consignment across several vehicles for a single leg of the journey |
| DoA | Delegation of Authority — the approval matrix governing who may approve what value. Used by Invoice Generation, and separate from roles and permissions |
Terms that mean something different here¶
| Word | Everyday meaning | Complifly meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Promote | Advance in seniority | Move a corrected document from quarantine into the live pipeline, re-running validation |
| Quarantine | Isolate something harmful | Hold a document that failed validation so it can be fixed — routine, not exceptional |
| Capability | General ability | A specific tri-state fact about one provider and one operation |
| Provenance | Origin of an artwork | Which GSP issued this document, and therefore which one must service its follow-on actions |
| Utility | A helper program | An operation class: a lookup with no document behind it, routed to the tenant's current provider |
Validation¶
You are ready to read the rest of the portal when you can state, without checking:
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can a cancelled IRN's document number be reused? | No. NIC consumes it permanently |
| What makes an e-Way Bill valid for movement? | Part-B — the vehicle details |
| Why does provenance exist? | So a cancellation goes to the GSP that issued the document, not the tenant's current one |
| What does a failed RLS scope look like? | Zero rows and a success response. It does not throw |
| What are the three capability states, and why three? | SUPPORTED, NOT_SUPPORTED, PENDING_VENDOR — so temporarily skipped work can be found and redone |
Troubleshooting¶
| Symptom | Cause | Action |
|---|---|---|
| A document "disappeared" after upload | It was quarantined, not lost | Open the Correction Cockpit |
| "Promote" is expected to send the document to the government | Promotion moves a document into the live pipeline; generation is a separate act | See What Complifly Does |
| A feature is described as unavailable although the provider advertises it | The provider offers it; this adapter may not implement it, or the endpoint has not been delivered | Check the capability state. PENDING_VENDOR is temporary, NOT_SUPPORTED is not |
| A query returns nothing and is assumed to mean an empty database | Almost always a scope problem, not an empty table | See Multi-Tenancy and Row-Level Security |