In most crusher plants the month-end close takes about a week. The dispatch register is caught up around the 5th, the stock count happens whenever the loader is free, the royalty statement waits for the office boy to return from the mines office, and the owner finally sees last month’s numbers somewhere near the 12th. By then the month is half gone and nothing can be corrected.
A crusher month-end close does not need a week. The work is not large. It is scattered across four registers and three people who each wait for the other one to finish.
This is a day-by-day close for a single crusher plant, with the statutory dates that actually fix the calendar, the sequence that removes the waiting, and the three things worth automating first.
What a crusher month-end close actually means
A month is closed when six things agree with each other: dispatches, stock, royalty, sales tax, purchases and the bank. If any one of them is still moving, none of the others can be trusted.
Two of these are not optional. Rule 56 of the CGST Rules requires a registered person to keep a stock account of goods received and supplied, and a manufacturer to keep monthly production accounts showing quantitative details of the raw materials used and the goods produced, including waste and by-products. If you are crushing stone, that is you.
The close calendar
The dates below are the ones that set the pace. Fit your own internal deadlines inside them, not after them.
| Date | What falls due | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| 7th | TDS deducted last month deposited | Non-government deductors |
| 8th | Quarterly return in Form Q, in Karnataka, for the preceding quarter | Quarry lease holders under the Karnataka Minor Mineral Concession Rules |
| 11th | GSTR-1 for the preceding month | Monthly filers |
| 13th | Invoice Furnishing Facility for the first two months of a quarter | QRMP taxpayers |
| 14th | Draft GSTR-2B generated on the portal | All regular taxpayers |
| 20th | GSTR-3B for the preceding month | Monthly filers |
| 22nd or 24th | Quarterly GSTR-3B, by state group | QRMP taxpayers |
State mineral rules differ, so check your own. In Karnataka the lessee must also keep correct accounts of the quantity of minor mineral produced, in stock and despatched, and file an annual return in Form Y by 10 April.
Day 1: the dispatch cut-off
Pick a fixed cut-off time on the last day of the month and hold it. In practice that means the last weighment of the month is the last slip in the month, and nothing is back-dated afterwards.
- Stop new weighments at the declared time and note the last slip number.
- List slips issued but not invoiced, and invoice them the same evening.
- List loaded vehicles that have not yet returned a signed copy, and mark them for follow-up rather than leaving them open.
- Check the slip series for gaps and cancellations, and get a written reason for every cancelled slip.
- Lock the month so no user can add or edit a dispatch in the closed period.
If you can only fix one thing this month, fix this one. Almost every other delay in the close is caused by dispatches still arriving after the books have been started.
Day 1 and 2: the physical stock count
Count on the morning of the 1st, before the plant has run for a day. Do it product by product: 40mm, 20mm, 10mm, M-sand, dust and any boulder or raw stone stack, plus fuel in the tank.
Record measured quantity, book quantity and the difference for every product, and write one line of explanation against each difference. Do not adjust the books quietly. A stack measured by eye will never match a book figure built from weighbridge tickets, and the size and direction of that gap is a useful monthly number in itself.
Day 2: royalty and permits
This is the statement that takes the longest when it is left to the end, and the shortest when the dispatch record is already mineral-wise. Produce three things.
- Quantity despatched by mineral for the month, against permits issued.
- Royalty payable and paid, with challan references.
- Running balance against the sanctioned quantity and the lease period.
Match that with the state portal before you file anything. Our guide to royalty reconciliation for quarries sets out the matching in detail.
Days 3 to 6: GST
Do purchases before sales. Your purchase side has a hard dependency on the portal, so start it the moment the draft GSTR-2B is available on the 14th.
- Book every purchase bill for the month, including diesel, spares, transport and hire charges.
- Act on supplier records in the Invoice Management System, accepting, rejecting or keeping them pending before GSTR-2B is generated. Records left untouched are treated as accepted.
- Reconcile booked purchases against GSTR-2B and list the differences by supplier.
- Prepare and file GSTR-1 by the 11th, with HSN and rate checked on the item master rather than on each invoice.
- File GSTR-3B by the 20th.
One change has made the sequence matter more than it used to. Since the July 2025 tax period the auto-populated liability in GSTR-3B is non-editable, so a mistake in GSTR-1 can no longer be quietly corrected in GSTR-3B. It has to be fixed in GSTR-1A before GSTR-3B is filed. There is also a hard outer limit now: from the July 2025 tax period the portal bars filing of GSTR-1, GSTR-3B, GSTR-9 and related returns once three years have passed from their due date.
Day 6: receivables, payables and bank
Three short jobs, each of which should be a report rather than an exercise.
- Party-wise outstanding with ageing, and statements sent to every credit party on the same date each month.
- Supplier balances, with hire vehicle and transporter accounts settled for the month.
- Bank reconciliation for every account, including any cash deposited by the weighbridge.
Day 7 becomes day 1: the owner’s report
The close is only useful if it produces one page the owner reads. Keep it to what changes decisions.
| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Production and dispatch | Tonnes produced and despatched by product, against last month |
| Sales | Value, average realisation per tonne by product, top ten parties |
| Royalty | Paid this month, balance left against the sanctioned quantity |
| Stock | Closing stock by product, and the physical against book difference |
| Money | Collections, receivables over 90 days, bank balance |
| Compliance | Returns filed, with dates, and anything pending |
What to automate first
You do not have to automate the whole crusher month-end close at once. Take these in order, because each one removes the delay that blocks the next.
- Weighbridge to slip to invoice. When gross, tare and net weight come straight off the weighbridge and become the slip and the invoice without retyping, the dispatch cut-off stops being a data entry job.
- Mineral-wise royalty on each dispatch. If royalty is attached to the dispatch when it happens, the monthly statement is a report rather than a reconstruction.
- Purchase reconciliation against GSTR-2A and 2B. This is the single longest manual task in most plants and the one where mistakes cost real money.
Start with one of these rather than all three. We have written about why starting small works better in mining.
Frequently asked questions
Can we really close in one day?
The books can. The stock count and the royalty statement need the 1st and the 2nd, and the GST work is fixed to portal dates you do not control. What a one-day close means in practice is that the owner’s report is ready on the 2nd, and the GST filings are routine rather than a scramble.
We use a CA for returns. Does this still apply?
Yes, and it helps your CA more than it helps you. Most delay at that end is caused by incomplete purchase bills and dispatch data arriving in pieces. Send a complete, locked month on a fixed date and the filing becomes uneventful.
Should the stock count be done every month or every quarter?
Every month. A quarterly count means a quarter of production has to be explained in one go, and by then nobody remembers which week the screen was down or the feed stone was wet.
What if a dispatch is genuinely missed after the cut-off?
Book it in the next month with a note, rather than reopening a closed month. Keep a short log of such items so you can see whether it is happening twice a year or twice a month.
Where this fits
A one-day close depends on the weighbridge, the royalty account and the returns sitting in one system rather than three. Quipu’s Stone Crusher and Quarry ERP reads gross, tare and net weight from the weighbridge, records mineral-wise royalty on each dispatch with a running balance against the sanctioned quantity, and prepares GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B with purchase reconciliation against GSTR-2A and 2B.
Sources
- CGST Rule 56: maintenance of accounts by registered persons
- Notification No. 83/2020-Central Tax: due date for GSTR-1
- CBIC: CGST Rule 59, Invoice Furnishing Facility
- CBIC: CGST Rule 61, due dates for GSTR-3B
- GSTN: revised advisory on the Invoice Management System
- Hard-locking of auto-populated liability in GSTR-3B from July 2025
- GSTN advisory: bar on filing GST returns after three years
- TDS payment and return filing due dates
- Karnataka Minor Mineral Concession Rules, 1994
