Updates

What’s new

What has changed in BastraLekha, newest first.

24 September 2026

• A home screen that answers the day's questions — what was sold this month against last, what customers owe, what is on the shelf and what suppliers have billed, each a way in to the screen behind it; a year of sales that switches between daily and monthly; how old what is owed has become; and the last few bills taken at the counter. What it shows
• Reports open on their figures — sales, outstanding, payables, stock ageing, outlet comparison and profit & loss each lead with the totals and the change on the period before, then the shape: which days carried the period, where the money came from, how much of what is owed is already overdue. Pointing at a column gives the day and the exact amount. The tables are unchanged and still export to Excel.
• A new look throughout — the product's own green on a quiet grey ground, a menu grouped under headings with the screen you are on marked, a trail of where you are in the header, and cards and controls at one rhythm across every screen. The same screens, the same keystrokes.
• What customers owe agrees wherever it is shown — the home screen's figure is now read from the customers' own ledgers, the same arithmetic the outstanding report does, and both can be narrowed to one outlet.

23 September 2026

• Items say how they are sold — pieces, metres, kilograms, sets or hanks — and an item code and a party code now suggest themselves instead of having to be invented. A new category can be made without leaving the item form.
• A discount per line and on the whole bill, given either as a percentage or in rupees, on the guided sale screen; the totals now set out items, discount, taxable value, CGST and SGST (or IGST), round off and what is to pay, the way a bill sets them out. A customer's GSTIN turns the sale into a GST invoice.
• A supplier's bill carries what it actually carries — the trade discount off before tax, freight with its own GST in its own ledger, who transported the goods and on what vehicle, and the delivery date.
• The guided menu is grouped — sales, purchases, parties, items, money, reports and settings — and now includes purchases, ledgers, day book, stock ageing, and money in and money out as screens of their own.
• How every figure is worked out is now written down: discount before GST, which GST and how much, rounding, returns pro rata, and how stock is valued. Read it
• An item can be added in the middle of a sale on the guided screens — type a name the counter does not have yet and file it there: price, kind of item, HSN, and only the details that kind insists on. It goes straight onto the sale. Items → Add item now leads that screen rather than trailing behind the spreadsheet tools.
• Guided screens, for a shop counter — a second way to run the same books, chosen under Settings → Features → Screens: a home page of large buttons, a one-screen sale, a seven-item menu, and the words a shop uses — sale, party, payment in, items, money to collect. Expert screens stay exactly as they are for an accountant. Nothing behind them differs, and switching either way loses nothing. How it works
• A bill is found by the customer's name, not only its number — on the Bills list and when taking a return. A form that asks about an item now names the item, with its code beside it rather than instead of it.
• Items can be searched at the till — the scan box now finds an item by any part of its name, SKU or HSN when there is no tag to scan, with its price and any sale price beside it. Scanning is untouched: a scanner's tag still resolves and bills exactly as before. How it works

21 September 2026

• Every list that grows can be typed into — government buyers, bank ledgers, branches, outlets and sale points, roles, Handloom registrations, GSTINs, and a category's own attribute lists now become a search box once they outgrow a glance, and stay plain dropdowns while they are short. How it works
• Ticking several from a long list — the branches a user works at, the branches a sale or rebate scheme runs at, the categories it covers, and the tagged pieces going on a challan are now searched the same way, with what is already ticked kept in view. At the stock desk a scanned tag ticks its own piece.
• HSN codes suggest themselves when filing a new item or changing one, each with the GST it carries — and a code nobody has used yet is still accepted.
• Search on the long tables — the stock count sheet, the chart of accounts, the trial balance and the outstanding report. Totals stay the totals of everything.
• A GeM contract's bill list is searched at the server, so an older bill is found and not only one of the latest hundred.

19 September 2026

• One address for everything — bastralekha.apie.tech now opens the website, with the product itself at /app and a page about the live demo at /demo. Existing links to the application still work; sign in at bastralekha.apie.tech/app.
• A credit note taken in error can be cancelled from the bill's page. The note keeps its number, marked cancelled and printing that way, a reversing voucher answers its entries, the goods go back out of stock, and the bill owes again what the note took off it. Refused once the credit has moved on — spent against another bill or used for an exchange — once a returned piece has gone out again, or once the month is closed. How it works
• A consignment can be called back before the other branch signs for it — the van broke down, the trip was called off — and the stock returns to the branch that sent it.
• Purchase orders can be amended while nothing has been delivered against them: the date wanted by, a quantity, a rate, the specification.
• A GSTR-7A certificate can be corrected until its credit is claimed.
• GeM contracts can be amended — delivery date, value, consignee, quantities and prices, with a note of what the portal changed. Never below what is already invoiced.
• Customers at the counter — add one from the till without leaving the bill, and the menu now says Customers & suppliers instead of Parties.

18 September 2026

Correcting what was set up

• Ledger accounts, product categories, branches and Handloom registrations can now be corrected, not just created — a typo in a name, a GSTIN, a certificate number or a renewal date. What a record was posted under stays fixed: an account's code and class, a category's code and whether its pieces are tagged, a branch's code, a registration's scheme.
• Accounts and categories can be taken off the list when nothing uses them. An account the books post to, or one still holding a balance, stays; so does a category with products in it.
• Roles of your own — add a role ("Godown keeper"), rename one, and change whether it works at one branch or all.

Finding things

• Type to search, everywhere the list is long — customers, suppliers, government buyers, weavers and societies, products, designs, yarns and lots, ledger accounts, bills, categories, schemes and states are now picked by typing any part of the name, a SKU, a GSTIN or a code. Short lists — payment modes, GST rates — stay as they were.
• Transporter and vehicle on a delivery challan suggest the ones used before, so neither is retyped from memory.

16 September 2026

For small shops

• Settings → Features — basics every shop has, and add-ons switched on when needed: purchase bills, purchase orders, several branches, markdowns, the audit trail, full accounting, GST returns, and the cooperative modules. Starting points for a small shop, a growing shop and a cooperative; an add-on brings what it needs with it. Anything unticked disappears from every menu, and nothing is deleted. How it works
• Simple roles — a shop can run on two roles, Owner and Counter staff, instead of six. Signing up asks whether you are a shop or a cooperative and starts you accordingly.
• Cloth by the metre, in part — sell 2.5 m off a 100 m roll: the till takes the length to the centimetre, prices it per metre, bands GST per metre, and the roll's stock comes down by exactly that. Receiving, returns, stock take, transfers and opening stock take metres to two decimals too.

11 September 2026

Subscription and sign-up

• Sign up online — a new organisation starts a 30-day free trial with 1,000 credits and is signed straight in. How it works
• One yearly plan, with credits: one per sales bill, 60,000 a year included, top-ups on request. Offline bills are never refused.
• Subscription & credits under Settings — plan, balance, daily usage, invoices, history — and a banner as the trial or year runs down.

Job-work documents and the till

• Printable job-work challan — every challan prints on A4 in triplicate (Rule 55), with both GSTINs, HSN, value, the return-by date and the section 143 declaration. Guide
• ITC-04 in Excel — Tables 4 and 5A for the period, one spreadsheet, to key into the return.
• The till now shows why a price is lower — the markdown or clearance on each line — and the Handloom Mark label of a tagged piece.

Purchase orders

• Purchase orders screen — place orders with societies and suppliers in pieces or kilograms, print them, receive part deliveries, book the society's bill straight from the order, close short, and see what is still to come. Guide

Government schemes and weaving

• Festival rebates — schemes, the rebate at the till, and the claim register from submission to money received. Guide
• Marketing Incentive and weaver roll — eligible turnover under the NHDP guidelines, claims, sanction and utilisation; sales channels on every bill.
• Handloom Mark labels — registrations, rolls, labels used once, voids, transfers between branches, the label account; the label prints on the invoice. Guide
• Markdowns — rules by stock age and clearance sales, approved by a second person; the markdown register; stock at the lower of cost and realisable value.
• Job work and yarn — yarn by weight and lot, job-work orders, challans, receipts with wages and wastage, the section 143 register and ITC-04. Guide
• Expos, GeM orders and GST TDS — exhibition sale points with close-out counts; GeM contracts to CRAC; receipts net of TDS, GSTR-7A and the credit claimed. Guide
• Selling beyond stock now needs a manager's approval at the till.

Fixed

• Sending unused Handloom labels to another branch failed every time.
• A label on a product counted that product's earlier sales towards the Marketing Incentive; it now counts only from the day the label went on. Labels on loose goods now print on invoices.
• Printing a rebate or incentive claim failed.

10 September 2026

• Returns — full and partial returns as credit notes with their own series; refunds, exchanges and credit kept on account, applied to later bills.
• Receivables and payables — receipts settling bills oldest first, supplier payments, debit notes, outstanding and payables reports, bank ledgers.
• Excel import and export for parties, products and stock, and export from lists and reports.
• GST rates updated to Notification 9/2025-Central Tax (Rate).
• Printing — thermal receipts on settling a bill; reprints marked DUPLICATE.
• Create screens for every module; server-side sessions; sign-in rate limits and lockout; screens reached by address gated like their menu entry.

Fixed

• Returns could not be posted; long lists stopped at their first page; downloads were refused; "Settle & print" did not print.
• A bank receipt posted to stock instead of the bank; a reversed payment still settled bills.
• Switching users could show the previous user's data.