Chennai IT consultancy reconciles AIS and ITR in 2 hours — down from 2 days

IT consulting and staffing firms are among the most TDS-intensive businesses in India. Every invoice raised to a corporate client carries a TDS deduction — typically 10% under Section 194J for professional fees or 1% / 2% under Section 194C for contract work. Across 9 deductor clients and 12 months of invoices, the firm's AIS statement runs to hundreds of rows by year-end. The accounts manager had evolved a careful but slow process: download AIS PDF → convert to Excel → sort by deductor → VLOOKUP against the invoice register → flag mismatches → email the client HR/accounts department to explain the discrepancy. Two deductors consistently reported a month lag, meaning their Q4 TDS showed up in the AIS the following year — creating apparent shortfalls that required explanation to the CA. HelloBooks changed the starting point. The firm now downloads the AIS in JSON format from the IT e-filing portal (a feature that's been available since FY2023–24 but rarely used because no tool could consume it easily). The upload takes 30 seconds. HelloBooks parses all entries and groups them by category: business receipts (the bulk), salary (for the two salaried partners), FD interest, and savings interest. The business receipts section is the key. Each deductor entry is compared against the AR ledger — matched by deductor TAN and approximate amount. Matched rows are green. Rows where the TDS amount differs from the book entry by more than ₹100 are flagged amber. Rows with no ledger counterpart are flagged red (these are typically the timing-lag entries from slow-filing deductors). The accounts manager works through the amber and red lists, accepts explainable differences, disputes incorrect amounts, and notes timing-lag items for carry-forward. The CA receives a clean reconciliation report that maps directly to the ITR Schedule TDS-2 section. The two-day sprint is now a two-hour morning task with a clear audit trail.