A voucher series in Smart Books decides how every invoice, receipt and payment is numbered, and whether the books can number them for you. If your sales invoices start at 539 instead of 1, or have gaps in the middle, you can set the series up properly and, if needed, renumber the posted vouchers. This guide shows where each setting sits and what to check before you change a number.
Why voucher series numbering matters
Under GST, a tax invoice must carry a serial number that is unique for the financial year and runs in consecutive order (Rule 46 of the CGST Rules, which limits the number to 16 characters). A clean series also makes your registers easy to read: your CA can see at a glance whether anything is missing. Our guide to the mandatory fields on a GST tax invoice covers the other details an invoice must show.
Confirm the exact numbering requirements for your business with your CA, especially if you issue several kinds of document.
Where to find voucher series in Smart Books
Open Masters and choose Voucher Series. The list is meant for configuring automatic numbering per voucher type for the current financial year. For each series it shows:
- Series Name and the Voucher Type it belongs to;
- Numbering, shown as auto or manual;
- Format Preview, a sample of what the next number looks like;
- Status, active or inactive.
You can search by series name, prefix or voucher type, and filter the list by voucher type and by numbering mode. Each row also has a Renumber… link, which we come to below.
Automatic or manual numbering
When you create a series, you pick the voucher type and then Voucher Numbering: Automatic or Manual.
- Automatic lets Smart Books assign the next number when you create the voucher. For most businesses this is the safer choice, because nobody has to remember the last number used.
- Manual leaves the number to you. Use it only when you must follow numbers issued elsewhere, such as pre-printed books.
When you create a voucher, the voucher header lets you choose the series. For an automatic series it previews the number the voucher will take. It also checks for a duplicate number, so you are warned before you save.
Set up the series format
For an automatic series you configure how the number is built, under Series Format:
- Prefix and Prefix separator, for example INV followed by a dash or slash;
- Min fixed length of numeric part and Padding character, so that 7 can appear as 0007;
- Suffix and Suffix separator, if you want a trailing code such as a branch or year.
Under Automatic Numbering Configuration you set the Starting No. and the Renumbering Frequency: None, Yearly, Half Yearly, Quarterly or Daily. For invoices, a yearly restart that follows the financial year is the common choice. Check the format preview before you save, and keep the total length within the 16-character limit.
What if the series starts partway up?
This happens more often than you would think. Books imported in parts, or vouchers deleted before the counter was fixed to avoid gaps, can leave a series that begins at 539 or has missing numbers. Smart Books repairs the next number automatically, but it deliberately does not change a number that is already posted, because a posted number identifies a document.
If you do want to bring the sequence back to a clean run, use Renumber… on the series row. It works like this:
- Choose the series and click Renumber…. The window is titled with the series name.
- Enter Start from (the default is 1) and click Check.
- Read the preview: posted vouchers, numbers changing, the range now and the range after, and a table of Date, Now, After and Status.
- If you are happy, click Renumber. The button stays disabled when no number would change.
Renumbering covers one series in one financial year at a time. Posted vouchers are walked in date order, and cancelled vouchers keep their place. The next voucher then carries on from the end of the series. Previewing needs only read access; applying needs permission to edit the series.
Think before you renumber
Renumbering rewrites the document number on posted vouchers. Smart Books warns that anything already printed or sent to a customer will no longer match. It does not move any ledger, tax, stock or bill, and it records every change in the audit trail, with the old and the new number.
In practice:
- Do not renumber invoices that are already reported in a filed GST return, e-invoiced with an IRN, or used for an e-way bill, unless your CA has agreed. The number on the portal will not follow the change.
- Do it only for a series where documents have not gone out, or where the business has decided to accept the mismatch.
- Take the preview to your CA first. It is a ready list of old and new numbers.
Key takeaways
- Set each voucher type up with its own series under Masters → Voucher Series, using automatic numbering where you can.
- Choose prefix, padding and renumbering frequency so the number stays unique, consecutive and short.
- Smart Books repairs the next number, but never silently changes a posted one.
- Use Renumber… only after reading the preview, and think about filed returns and invoices already sent.
Clean numbering is one part of a tidy month-end. If you also want a routine for the rest, see our bookkeeping checklist for Indian SMEs and the step-by-step guide to bank reconciliation in Smart Books. When you are ready to set your own series up, Smart Books keeps the series, the preview and the audit trail in one place.
