SaaS ERP Consultant, India

Foreign parent, Indian subsidiary: who bills whom

Many Indian SaaS companies are structured with a holding company abroad, often in the United States or Singapore, and an Indian subsidiary that employs the product and engineering team. Others are Indian companies with an overseas sales entity. The structure decides almost everything about the finance stack, so I map it first.

The questions I work through with founders and their advisors are:

• Which entity contracts with overseas customers, and which with Indian customers?
• How does the Indian entity charge the parent for development and support, on the terms and pricing your transfer pricing advisor sets?
• Which CRM and billing records belong to each entity, and how is that decided when a deal is created?
• How are the entities consolidated for investors and the board?

A common problem is a single billing platform sending every invoice from the parent, including invoices to Indian customers that should come from the Indian entity with GST. Another is intercompany invoices raised once a quarter from spreadsheets, disconnected from the costs behind them. I design entity routing in the CRM and billing system and recurring intercompany entries in both ledgers. The general SaaS process behind this is on my ERP for SaaS page.

Export of software services and foreign currency receipts

When an Indian entity bills customers outside India, the supply may qualify as an export of services, which affects GST treatment. The conditions, including how and when payment is received in convertible foreign exchange, should be confirmed with your chartered accountant, along with any undertaking your accountant advises filing so exports can be invoiced without paying tax upfront.

For the systems, export revenue creates a trail that has to stay connected:

• An export invoice in the customer's currency, with the wording your accountant specifies.
• The foreign currency receipt, matched to that invoice, with the bank's realization record attached.
• The exchange rate used at invoicing and at receipt, and the resulting gain or loss.
• Payment processor fees and partial receipts, which often break one-to-one matching.

When an international billing platform collects card payments in dollars and settles to an Indian bank account in batches, matching individual invoices to realization records is often the hardest part of month end. I design the data flow so each settlement can be traced back to invoices. For the wider Indian ERP context, including GST and e-invoicing, see my ERP consultant in India page.

Domestic SaaS: GST, TDS and recurring mandates

Selling subscriptions to Indian customers brings a different set of requirements. GST applies to domestic SaaS, so the billing system must capture each business customer's GSTIN and state, determine place of supply and apply the right tax. Where your accountant confirms e-invoicing applies to your business, invoices to registered customers must go through the e-invoicing process, which matters when many renewal invoices are generated automatically.

Many Indian business customers also deduct TDS before paying. Receivables then show small balances that are not really unpaid, and someone has to collect the TDS certificates and match them. I design how expected TDS is recorded, how short payments are matched and how certificates are tracked against invoices.

For self-serve customers paying by card or UPI, recurring payments follow mandate rules set by the regulator, which affect how auto-renewals and plan upgrades are charged. The billing design needs a clear process for expired or declined mandates and for customers who prefer annual invoices instead.

Some cross-border digital payments have also been subject to an equalization levy in the past. That regime has changed over time, so ask your advisor about its current position before relying on any assumption.

Leaving Tally, choosing a stack and working remotely

Many Indian SaaS companies keep their books in Tally maintained by an outside accountant, with billing and CRM data exported to spreadsheets each month. That can work for the Indian entity alone, but it rarely gives founders timely recurring revenue, retention or deferred revenue figures, and it does not consolidate with a foreign parent.

The options I usually compare are a cloud ledger with GST support paired with a subscription billing platform, an ERP with subscriptions for both entities, or separate ledgers per entity with a reporting layer on top. I test each with an export invoice, a domestic GST invoice with TDS, a mandate failure and an intercompany charge, through a structured ERP evaluation. When migration is chosen, I plan the cutover around the April to March financial year so year-end close is not disrupted.

All work is remote. Indian teams usually overlap well with UK and Gulf mornings and US evenings, so sessions can include parent-company finance staff abroad. I also connect billing data to growth: with one account identifier across CRM and billing, SaaS SEO and paid campaigns can be judged on paying customers. See the India hub and CRM consulting for more.