Setting your BIN, and the Mushak 6.3 challan

The VAT settings are the kind you fill in once and never touch again. But they do have to be right once — filled in wrongly, every challan prints wrongly, and that is the sort of thing nobody notices for months.

The four fields that must be filled

Open the VAT and invoice section of your settings:

1. BIN — your Business Identification Number. A Mushak 6.3 challan without one is not a valid VAT document. It is the most important field here and the one most often left empty.
2. VAT-registered name — exactly the name on the registration. If your signboard says something else, the registration name still goes here.
3. Address — the registered address.
4. Default VAT rate — what new products get. Anything on a different rate can be set on the product itself.

If the BIN is missing, the settings screen shows an amber warning about it.

Do your prices include VAT?

Getting this switch wrong inverts every figure downstream, so it is worth understanding.

In Bangladeshi retail, shelf prices nearly always include VAT. A price tag reading 115 means the customer hands over 115, with the VAT already inside it. If that is your shop, leave "prices include VAT" on. The system backs the net value out of the 115 exactly rather than approximating it.

Wholesale and institutional selling often quotes prices before VAT, with the VAT added at the foot of the bill. In that case turn the switch off.

What if your shop does both? Set it to whichever happens more often — usually the shelf convention — and change it on the wholesale bill when you need to.

When Supplementary Duty applies

Some goods carry Supplementary Duty. The one thing to remember: SD is levied first, and VAT is levied on top of it, not beside it. The system already works this way, so there is nothing for you to do. The mistake only appears when somebody checks by hand and puts the two side by side.

The rate-wise summary

The summary on the VAT screen under Reports is the thing the VAT office wants. It gives one row per rate: how much was sold at that rate, and how much VAT that came to.

A single combined total mixing five per cent and fifteen per cent is no good, because the rates cannot be separated back out of it. That is the whole point of it being rate-wise.

What about discounts? A discount reduces the assessable value, so it reduces the VAT with it. A discount applied to a whole bill is spread across the lines in proportion to their value — without that, the rate-wise summary would never reconcile.

At the end of the month

Pick the month on the VAT screen and export the summary. That is the raw material for your return.

Make one habit of it: check it a week before the month ends. If a product is on the wrong rate there is still time to fix it. On the last day, there is not.