What is changing

Until now, many businesses treated the Ship-to GSTIN as an optional detail. Under the revised framework, whenever the Ship-to party is a registered person, the Ship-to GSTIN becomes a mandatory field for Bill-to/Ship-to and Combination transactions. Where the Ship-to party doesn’t have a GSTIN, businesses can enter “URP” (unregistered person) instead.

The stated objective is to strengthen traceability of goods movement and give authorised tax officers a stronger audit trail when goods are billed to one party but delivered to another.

Understanding the four transaction types

GSTN has classified all EWB transactions into four categories, and only two of them require a Ship-to GSTIN:

• Regular transaction – Billing and delivery happen between the same two parties. No Ship-to GSTIN is needed.
• Bill-to/Ship-to transaction – The invoice goes to the buyer, but goods are delivered to a third party on the buyer’s instruction. Ship-to GSTIN is mandatory here (or “URP” if unregistered).
• Bill-from/Dispatch-from transaction – Goods are dispatched from a third-party location but delivered to the buyer itself. Since the buyer is already the Bill-to party, no separate Ship-to GSTIN is required.
• Combination transaction – Both scenarios apply together: goods move from a third party to a fourth party. Ship-to GSTIN is mandatory for the fourth party.

A key rule: Bill-to and Ship-to GSTIN cannot be identical

If your goods are simply being delivered to the buyer’s own additional place of business, that is not a genuine Bill-to/Ship-to case — it should be entered as a regular supply, with the actual delivery address mentioned separately. The system will reject any attempt to enter the same GSTIN in both the Bill-to and Ship-to fields for a Bill-to/Ship-to or Combination transaction.

Confidentiality of Ship-to GSTIN

A common concern raised by trade was commercial confidentiality — buyers often don’t want their supplier to know who the end customer is. GSTN has clarified that:

• Ship-to GSTIN will not be printed on the e-Way Bill.
• It will not be available through GET e-Way Bill APIs.
• Only the Ship-to address and PIN code will remain visible, as before.
• The GSTIN itself will be visible only to authorised officers for verification purposes.

This means suppliers, buyers and transporters can continue to generate the EWB without necessarily exposing sensitive third-party information — although if the supplier is generating the bill, the buyer will still need to share the Ship-to GSTIN with them, or generate the EWB themselves to keep that detail private.

Export and merchant exporter scenarios

For export consignments, goods often move from the supplier’s premises to a port, airport, ICD, CFS, customs area or a freight-forwarder/CHA location before leaving the country. Since these locations are typically not GST-registered, “URP” can be entered as the Ship-to GSTIN, while the actual port/airport address and PIN code are still recorded. Importantly, entering “URP” is only a system-level EWB requirement — it does not reclassify the transaction as a domestic supply to an unregistered person. The export nature continues to be determined from the export invoice, shipping bill and other customs documentation.

For merchant exporters, the Bill-to GSTIN will be that of the merchant exporter, and the Ship-to GSTIN follows the same registered/unregistered logic described above.

Note: These validations apply not just to the standalone e-Way Bill API, but also to the “Generate IRN and EWB together” flow and the “e-Way Bill by IRN” API. Each carries its own error codes (for example, Error Code 608 for a missing mandatory Ship-to GSTIN, and Error Code 618 where Bill-to and Ship-to GSTINs match) — ERP and GSP teams should map these into their validation logic well before 1st August 2026.