Which exchange rate goes on an export invoice, now that the notifications have stopped

An export invoice carries two currencies: the dollars or dirhams your buyer will pay, and the rupee value on which GST is worked out. The buyer's side is fixed by contract. The rupee side is fixed by law, and the machinery behind it changed in July 2024, quietly enough that most pages ranking for this question still describe the old one. Here is the current answer, with the rule numbers to check it against.

The answer: the CBIC customs rate, export column, from ICEGATE

Rule 34(1) of the CGST Rules settles it for goods. The rate of exchange is "the applicable rate of exchange as notified by the Board under section 14 of the Customs Act, 1962 for the date of time of supply of such goods". The Board is CBIC. Not the RBI reference rate, not your bank's remittance rate, not whatever a currency site showed that morning. The same rate list customs uses to value cargo also values your invoice.

Since 4 July 2024 that list lives on the ICEGATE portal, under its View Exchange Rate service, and nowhere else. It quotes 22 currencies, each with two rates: one for imported goods, one for export goods. An export invoice takes the export goods column, at the rate in force on the date of time of supply. That is the whole answer; the rest is the detail that keeps it right.

One boundary before the detail. This is the rule for goods. For exported services, Rule 34(2) points somewhere else entirely: the rate "determined as per the generally accepted accounting principles" for the date of time of supply, which in practice means the rate your accountant consistently books, commonly the RBI reference rate. Much of the advice online quotes one rule to the other's reader. This article is about goods.

CBIC stopped issuing the notifications in July 2024

For years the customs exchange rate arrived as a numbered notification under Section 14: a fortnightly PDF on the CBIC site. That series is closed. Circular No. 07/2024-Customs, dated 25 June 2024, replaced it with the Exchange Rate Automation Module (ERAM) with effect from 4 July 2024. State Bank of India now feeds the rates to customs electronically and ICEGATE publishes them. No exchange-rate notification has been issued since.

The rhythm is fixed by the circular. Rates are published on the evening of the 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month, by 6 pm, and take effect from midnight of the following day, holding until the next cycle. If the Thursday is a holiday, the latest received SBI rates go up that Thursday anyway (an amendment made by Circular No. 17/2024-Customs on 18 September 2024). The circular also allows a revised rate inside the fortnight if a currency swings sharply.

So any page telling you to "check the latest CBIC exchange rate notification", or linking a notification PDF as current, is describing machinery that stopped in July 2024. The rates continue under the same Section 14 authority; only the address changed. Past lists stay available on ICEGATE, which matters, because old invoices need old rates.

Two columns per currency. Exports take the second one

The list quotes each currency twice: the import column tracks the selling side of the rate and sits higher, the export column tracks the buying side and sits lower. Here is the shape, from the last list published as a notification, in force from 21 June 2024:

Rates from the final notified list, No. 45/2024-Customs (N.T.), in force 21 June 2024, shown for the structure, not for use. Pull the current fortnight's list from ICEGATE.

Picking the import column on an export invoice is the mistake nobody catches by eye. The arithmetic checks out, the printout looks fine, and every rupee value is a couple of percent high. Nothing surfaces until a computer matches the figures against the shipping bill, months later.

The yen and the won are quoted per 100 units

Twenty of the currencies are quoted per single unit. The Japanese Yen and the Korean Won sit in a separate schedule, quoted per 100 units, because a per-unit figure would be a fraction of a rupee. Read the export column as rupees per 100 yen, not per yen.

Miss that and the error is a factor of a hundred, and it still looks like a number. An invoice of ¥10,00,000 at an export rate of 52.00 per 100 yen is ₹5,20,000. Treat 52.00 as a per-yen rate and the same invoice becomes ₹5.2 crore: absurd on a moment's thought, but in a value field it is just digits, and software will print it and carry it into your return.

Which date's rate: the time of supply, and it stays frozen

Rule 34(1) names a specific date: the time of supply of the goods under Section 12 of the CGST Act. For a registered exporter of goods that is, in practice, the invoice date. Notification No. 66/2017-Central Tax (15 November 2017) took advances out of the time of supply for goods, so tax attaches when the invoice is issued or should have been issued, and the exchange rate attaches with it. Use the ICEGATE export rate in force on the invoice date: the fortnightly list whose window covers it.

Two consequences follow, and both trip people up.

First, the rate on an invoice is a historical fact, like its number. If you reprint a July invoice in March, it must show July's rate and July's rupee value, not March's. Software that quietly reconverts on reprint is rewriting a filed figure; the reprint stops matching what went into July's GSTR-1.

Second, the shipping bill legitimately uses a different date. Under Section 14 of the Customs Act, customs converts the export value at the rate in force on the date the shipping bill is presented. If your invoice is dated the 2nd and the shipping bill is filed on the 9th, with a rate change between them, the two documents will carry two rates, and neither is wrong: they answer two different legal questions. Do not "correct" one to match the other.

Why a wrong rate quietly stops the IGST refund

The rupee value built from this rate is not decoration. It is the value that goes into Table 6A of GSTR-1 against the shipping bill number, date and port code. Once GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B are filed, GSTN checks the two returns against each other (the IGST in Table 6A must be covered by Table 3.1(b) of GSTR-3B, one more reason the two returns must not drift apart), then transmits the invoice data to ICEGATE to be matched against the shipping bill, field by field. A refund of IGST paid on exports moves only after that match succeeds.

A wrong exchange rate breaks exactly that match. The value in the return disagrees with the value customs holds, and the refund simply does not move. No notice arrives; the money sits until someone asks why a refund from four months ago has not landed. The fix runs through amending the return (Table 9A of a later GSTR-1) and waiting for retransmission.

Exporting under a Letter of Undertaking does not make the rate optional. There is no IGST on the invoice, but Table 6A still carries the rupee value, and the refund of input tax credit is computed from export turnover, so the figure does the same work. The LUT has its own failure mode, covered in what to do when invoices were raised on an expired LUT.

What the invoice itself should show

Rule 46 governs an export invoice like any other tax invoice, with the export endorsement on top (payment of IGST, or under bond or LUT without payment). On the currency question, show three things: the foreign currency amounts your buyer will pay, the exchange rate applied, and the resulting rupee values. Printing the rate costs one line and answers the question every later reader has, accountant, bank or officer.

This is also a place where software should do the remembering. Layerdots ERP keeps the CBIC fortnightly rates, stamps the export-column rate onto the invoice at the time of supply so a reprint next year shows the same figure, and prints both the foreign currency total and the rupee total. Whatever you bill with, check those three properties: the right column, the right date, and a rate that never silently changes afterwards.

One adjacent obligation: exports are B2B for e-invoicing purposes, so if your turnover has crossed the e-invoice threshold, your export invoices need IRNs like any other B2B invoice.

Common questions

Can I use the RBI reference rate for an export of goods?
No. Rule 34(1) names the rate notified under Section 14 of the Customs Act, which is the CBIC rate on ICEGATE, and the RBI reference rate is a different number. The RBI rate has a legitimate role for exported services under Rule 34(2), which is exactly why so many pages mix the two up.

Where do I find the rate for an invoice I am raising today?
ICEGATE's View Exchange Rate page, choosing the list in force on your invoice date. Since 4 July 2024 there is no notification to download, and third-party rate pages can lag the fortnightly cycle or show the import column first, so for a figure that feeds a return, take it from ICEGATE itself.

My invoice and my shipping bill show different rates. Which one do I fix?
Probably neither. The GST invoice converts at the rate in force on the time of supply; customs converts at the rate in force on the date the shipping bill is presented. When those dates straddle a rate change, the documents differ by design. Fix something only if the two used different columns, or a rate that was never in force on either date.

The buyer paid three weeks later and the rupee had moved. Do I amend the invoice?
No. The GST value was fixed at the time of supply and realisation does not reopen it. The difference between the invoiced rupee value and what the bank credits is an exchange gain or loss in your books, an accounting entry, not a GST event. Your bank's realisation paperwork will carry its own rate, and that is fine.

I have been converting at a Google rate, or the import column, all year. How bad is it?
Per invoice, usually a two to three percent error in the rupee value, which is why it went unnoticed. Across a year it is a consistent misstatement of export turnover, and for IGST-paid exports it can be why refunds are not transmitting. This is where reading stops helping: take the list of affected invoices to your CA, because the fix involves return amendments with deadlines, not just better invoices from today.