Several Indian companies have begun discussions with their IT vendors and tax advisors to upgrade their systems to enable tracking of goods and analysis of tax and other cost implications once the  goods and services tax (GST) regime comes into force.

Companies are mainly upgrading their enterprise resource planning (ERP) — a category of business-management software — so as to accommodate the complexities of calculating ERP. ERP helps companies manage and monitor everything in the organisation, including supply chain, finance and even human resource functions. SAP and Oracle are the big players in the Indian ERP space. 

Many companies will have to move from their current system, where every transaction is recorded separately, to an upgraded system where there is a correlation between every entry, according to industry executives.