VAT software that names the forms it produces

A great deal of what is sold as VAT software in Bangladesh is a workbook with a logo on it. The transactions live in one system, a person retypes them into a statutory layout in another, and the two disagree by an amount that is discovered within 15 days of the quarter end under time pressure.

The rest of it is an accounting product with a tax field on the invoice, described as VAT ready, which means something different in every conversation. So this page does the boring thing and names the artefacts.

Three artefacts, described in full rather than as ticks. The same text appears on the compliance guides and in the comparison matrix, so it cannot be softened in one place and hardened here.

The 6.3 detail worth pausing on is when the number is allocated. At the counter it is allocated inside the transaction that completes the sale, not at print time: a sale cannot reach completed without a number, a rollback returns the number rather than burning it, and a voided sale keeps its number and is marked voided. That channel reads as an unbroken run, which is the property an officer checks first. Credit sales carry their sales invoice number into the same register instead, from a separate unbroken sequence, and cancelling a credit invoice does not yet mark its register rows voided. If most of your supply is on credit, look at that before you rely on this.

Put here, in its own section, rather than in a footnote. Two of these are things a competing product does and we do not.

The rate library covers the rates a Bangladeshi business actually charges, applied through tax templates by item and by customer rather than typed per invoice.

As of 19 August 2026, per the Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 and its Rules 2016, and the Income Tax Act 2023, as amended by the Finance Act 2026. Rates, thresholds and schedules in Bangladesh are re-issued by SRO, often mid-year, and the figures here are drawn from professional secondary sources because NBR's own site was not reachable at review time. Confirm with your VAT consultant before you rely on any figure here. NBR is the authority; this page is not.

1. 01Sales and purchases were recorded as they happened, so the 6.3 and 6.1 registers already exist. There is no separate book to write up.
2. 02Open the return figure for the period. Output VAT from the 6.3 register, netted against creditable input VAT from the 6.1 register, resolving to net VAT payable or a credit carried forward.
3. 03Click through from either figure to the documents behind it and check the ones that look wrong. A figure you cannot trace is a figure you will be defending alone.
4. 04Export the registers for your own records and for the retention period, which runs to 5 years.
5. 05Sign in to the NBR portal and submit, within 15 days of the quarter end if you file quarterly, which is now the default, or by the last day of the following month if you have opted to file monthly. That step is a person, here as everywhere else.

Run this on every vendor on your shortlist. It takes twenty minutes and it separates the field faster than any feature list.

1. 01Make a sale in front of them and look at the document it produced.
2. 02Ask when the statutory number is allocated: at print time, or inside the transaction that completes the sale.
3. 03Void that sale and look at the register again. The voided document should still be there, keeping its number.
4. 04Export last month's purchase register and check the supplier BIN and challan number are actually in it, because your input-tax claim depends on those columns.
5. 05Ask to see the return figure for a closed period, then click from it to the documents behind it.
6. 06Ask what happens at filing time. The correct answer from anyone is that a person signs in and submits.
7. 07Ask whether the VAT capability is in the product or in an add-on, and if it is an add-on, who supports it and what happens at your next upgrade.