GSTN puts e-way bill Ship-to GSTIN change on hold

The Goods and Services Tax Network has put its planned e-way bill changes on hold, days before they were due to take effect on 1 August 2026. No revised date has been given.

The paused package had two parts. The first made capture of the Ship-to GSTIN mandatory in bill-to and ship-to transactions, where an invoice is raised on one party but the goods move to a different address. Where the delivery location was unregistered, “URP” was to be entered. The second was a voluntary closure facility that would have let taxpayers formally close an active e-way bill when goods never moved or a transaction was cancelled after generation.

GSTN said its advisories dated 9 June and 17 June, along with the detailed FAQs issued in early July, will be withdrawn from the GST portal. It told taxpayers not to make changes in their production environments on the basis of those advisories and to wait for further communication.

The rollout had already slipped once, from 15 June to 1 August, after businesses, GST Suvidha Providers and ERP vendors asked for time to rework API integrations, master data and testing. Industry bodies had pushed for a longer deferral, pointing to e-commerce, auto components and EPC contracts where billing and delivery addresses routinely differ.

For sellers the immediate effect is that dispatches do not break this week. Marketplace and 3PL flows, where a brand bills the platform but ships to a fulfilment centre or an end customer, were the sharpest exposure. That risk is deferred, not removed.

Teams that already cleaned up ship-to GSTIN capture in their order and billing stack should keep it. The field remains the direction of travel, and a fresh date can arrive with short notice.