New Delhi, Aug 5: Busy Infotech, one of India’s business accounting and GST software companies, released a data‑driven view of how India’s small and medium enterprises prepare for monthly GST filings, based on a granular analysis of GSTR‑1 activity from April 2024 to June 2026. Busy Infotech examined records over this period, aggregating the Unique GSTIN Count for each calendar day from the 1st to the 13th across multiple GST filing cycles. This lens isolates how many distinct GSTINs actively engage with GSTR‑1 data on each day of the early‑month window, providing a clear picture of when SMEs tend to concentrate their GST preparation work.
The principal finding of the research is that 52.4% of GSTR‑1 activity during days 1–13 occurs on days 9–11, the three days before and including the 11th, the statutory due date for monthly GSTR‑1 filers, with 21.6% occurring on the 11th alone, measured by Unique GSTIN Count across the period studied. In other words, more than half of all distinct GSTINs engaging with GSTR‑1 data in the early part of the month do so within just three days, and more than one in five engage specifically on the due date itself. Busy Infotech describes this as a clear “mid‑month rush window” in SME GST behaviour: while SMEs are active on each day of the filing cycle, Unique GSTIN Count activity is heavily concentrated in the narrow band between the 9th and the 11th, rather than spread evenly across days 1–13.
The data further shows that the closer a business gets to the 11th, the later in the day it tends to file. The share of GSTR‑1 filings taking place after 7 PM rises from 12.5% on the 9th, to 15.3% on the 10th, to 21.3% on the 11th itself, the statutory due date. Filings after 9 PM more than doubled over the same three days, from 4.4% to 9.3%, and the single busiest hour of the day shifts from noon on the 9th to 5 PM on the 11th. This shows SMEs not only file in the final days of the window but also in the final hours, leaving less room to catch and correct errors before the cut-off. A similar pattern holds for GSTR‑3B, the share of filings taking place after 7 PM rises from 13.5% three days before the 20th‑of‑the‑month deadline to 19.4% on the 20th itself, with after 9 PM filings climbing from 4.3% to 7.4% over the same window, indicating that the late‑day rush is not unique to GSTR‑1, but a broader pattern in how SMEs approach GST deadlines generally.
Commenting on the findings, Mr. Brijesh Agrawal, CEO, Busy Infotech, said,
“This rush in the three days before the GST filing deadline pushed later and later into the evening as the 11th approaches, is where the risk of avoidable errors, missed reconciliation and compliance stress is the highest for small and mid‑sized businesses. Since BUSY is integrated directly with GST workflows, we can observe these patterns in real time and turn them into actionable insight for our customers and partners. It positions BUSY not just as a GST‑ready accounting solution, but as a partner assisting India’s SMEs in navigating their GST filings and returns.”