7 Best Billing Software for Garment, Cloth and Apparel Shops in India 2026

What makes garment and cloth shop billing different

Sandeep runs a cloth shop in Delhi. Like most owners, he billed on Excel and tracked stock in a separate register. Every evening he reconciled the two, and it took at least forty-five minutes. Variants were the real problem. "Blue Shirt - M" and "Blue Shirt - L" both showed up as "Blue Shirt". Wrong sizes got billed. Stock counts drifted. After switching to proper software, the reconciliation evenings stopped and the variant problem went with them.

Sandeep is a composite drawn from patterns across Accountune onboardings. Names and identifying details have been changed.

Garment retail is not general retail. A kirana store manages perhaps 500 SKUs by brand and quantity. An apparel shop manages those same 500 designs multiplied across six sizes, eight colours and three seasonal variants. That is tens of thousands of inventory positions before a second product line exists. Generic billing software handles this badly, which is why so many shops end up running two systems in parallel: one for billing, one for stock in a spreadsheet.

A second complication hits cloth shops and textile merchants specifically. A fabric store sells by the metre, in bales and by the lot. A readymade counter sells by the piece. A saree house and most multi-brand showrooms do both from the same counter. Software that understands only one unit forces a workaround on every second bill.

A third is returns. Apparel carries the highest return rate in Indian retail, and most of it is size exchange rather than refund. Software that cannot put a returned piece back into the exact size and colour it came from will drift out of sync within a month.

A fourth is the tax itself. Since 22 September 2025, the GST rate on a garment depends on its price per piece. A ₹2,400 kurta and a ₹2,600 kurta attract different rates. Software that cannot switch that automatically pushes the decision onto whoever is standing at the counter during a festive rush.

What to look for in garment billing software: 7 non-negotiables

Filter every product against these seven. If it fails two or more, skip it for a garment or apparel business.

1. Size, colour and style variant matrix. The same design across multiple variants must exist as separate stock units. "Shirt - Blue - M" and "Shirt - Blue - L" should carry separate counts, not a combined one.

2. Automatic GST by price per piece. The software should apply 5% up to ₹2,500 per piece and 18% above it, without anyone choosing at the counter. This is the post-GST-2.0 structure effective 22 September 2025.

3. Multiple units on one invoice. Fabric by the metre, bales and lots for textile merchants, pieces for readymade, boxes for sets. A shop selling more than one of these needs them on the same bill.

4. Barcode POS billing, tag printing and printer support. During a Diwali weekend there is no time to type product names. Scan, price, print. The software should also generate the tags themselves, per variant, rather than leaving you to buy labels separately. Thermal for a quick counter sale, A4 for a B2B buyer who needs a full tax invoice.

5. Returns and size exchange against the original bill. The returned piece has to go back to the exact size and colour, and the credit has to reference the original invoice for GST purposes.

6. Seasonal stock and dead-stock reports. End-of-season slow movers need to surface early enough to plan sale pricing before the season closes.

7. GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B data without rework. At minimum the software should produce filing-ready data. Ideally your CA can pull it directly rather than waiting for an export.

On offline billing. Some shops genuinely lose internet often enough that offline mode matters. If that is you, it belongs on your list and it narrows your options sharply, because most cloud tools do not offer it. Count how many times last month you actually could not have billed. If the answer is zero or one, cloud is the better trade.

7 garment billing software compared

This table compares capability rather than price. Plan tiers and prices move through the year; capability moves slowly. Confirm current pricing on each vendor's own page before buying.

The 7 best billing software for garment and cloth shops

Accountune is reviewed first because it is the recommendation. The six that follow are covered on where each one stops being the right answer for a garment counter, because that is the decision you are actually making.

1. Accountune: best overall for Indian garment and cloth shops

Accountune is a cloud GST billing and accounting platform built in Jaipur since 2017 and used by 12,000+ Indian small businesses. For garment, cloth and apparel retail it covers the full stack: size, colour and style variant inventory, barcode POS billing with tag generation, automatic GST switching across the ₹2,500 threshold, multi-unit invoicing, returns and exchanges, e-invoice IRN, WhatsApp sharing and CA read-only access.

The variant matrix is the real differentiator. Most tools treat it as a bolt-on or push it into custom fields. Accountune handles it natively, so "Shirt - XL - Navy" and "Shirt - XL - White" are separate stock units with their own counts, their own sales reports and their own low-stock alerts. During a festive week when you are moving three hundred pieces a day, that is the difference between knowing your stock and guessing it.

Multi-unit billing matters just as much for a cloth shop or textile merchant. Fabric by the metre, in bales and by the lot, and readymade by the piece all sit on the same Accountune invoice, which is exactly where fabric-plus-readymade counters get stuck on generic software.

Returns go back to the variant. A size exchange in Accountune links to the original bill and returns the piece to the exact size and colour, so the count stays honest and the credit note stays GST-clean.

Staff logins are role-based with activity logged per user on the paid plans, so counter staff see what they need and the owner sees everything. Stock is tracked godown-wise across outlets and showrooms.

Pricing: free plan at ₹0 and paid plans from ₹799 per year, billed annually with GST included and no per-bill charges. Current plan detail is on the Accountune pricing page.

Free trial: 4 days, full features, no credit card.

Full feature detail: the garment store billing software page covers the variant matrix, textile HSN setup, season tags and dead-stock reports in detail.

Built for: garment and cloth shops, apparel showrooms, boutiques, saree houses, fabric and textile merchants, multi-brand outlets and small garment wholesalers.

Where Accountune falls short: it is cloud-only, so it needs an internet connection and does not bill offline, though mobile data is enough. It is not built for garment manufacturing with production planning and bill-of-materials depth, and it does not offer footfall analytics, loyalty programmes or marketplace sync.

2. TallyPrime: best for accountant-managed businesses

TallyPrime is the product most Indian CAs know, which removes onboarding friction where accounts are CA-managed, but for a garment counter that advantage is bought at a real cost. Size and colour have to be constructed through product attributes rather than existing as a native matrix, so setup that takes an afternoon in Accountune takes genuine configuration effort here. There is no native mobile app, and cloud access needs an additional subscription that works best against a local server. The licence is a high one-time cost with an annual renewal on top, which is difficult to justify for a boutique billing eighty customers a day. It fits a business with a full-time accountant already inside a Tally workflow, and stops fitting one that wants to bill from a phone.

3. Vyapar: best for shops that need offline billing

Vyapar bills fully offline on Android and Windows, which no cloud tool here matches, but its entry tier stays on those two platforms with no iPhone or browser access. Multi-outlet inventory is basic, wholesale and textile order flows are not handled well, and season-wise and dead-stock reporting is limited. Shops planning a second outlet or moving into wholesale tend to hit that ceiling within a year to eighteen months, which is the point at which Accountune's cloud coverage and variant depth start to matter more than offline mode did.

4. GimBooks: best for a first-time single-counter user

GimBooks is a lighter, mobile-first product that markets to boutiques and fabric stores and does bill per metre, but reporting depth, multi-outlet handling and wholesale flows are all thinner than the rest of this list. Billing is monthly, which adds up faster than an annual plan across three years. It works for a first-time software user running a single counter with simple needs, and a shop growing past that starts looking elsewhere quickly.

5. Marg ERP: best for garment wholesalers with bulk orders

Marg carries deep roots in pharma and FMCG wholesale and has extended into garment and footwear with a module that handles size, shade and style stock alongside bulk orders, but the product shows its age, with an interface a generation behind modern cloud software and a server-based installation that makes remote access an effort. Pricing is dealer-quoted with annual maintenance on top and there is no self-serve trial, so you cannot evaluate it without a sales conversation. For an apparel retailer who wants to be live in a day, that is a heavy start.

6. GoFrugal: best for multi-brand franchise outlets

GoFrugal handles purchase orders and supplier payments well for the multi-brand franchise model that several apparel outlets run on, but it is sold and implemented through partners rather than self-serve, with dealer-quoted pricing and no public figure to compare. The depth is aimed at chains rather than a single counter. A shop with one or two outlets pays for franchise machinery it will not use.

7. LOGIC ERP: best for multi-location garment chains

LOGIC ERP handles centralised catalogues, inter-store transfers and loyalty programmes for apparel chains of five or more outlets, but below that size it is over-built and over-priced, with custom-quoted pricing and no published number to compare. It is the right tool once you have outgrown everything else, not the one you choose first.

GST on garments after GST 2.0

This is where garment and apparel billing most often goes wrong, and it is worth being exact.

Since 22 September 2025, GST on readymade garments and made-up textile articles is:

• 5% for articles with a sale value up to ₹2,500 per piece

• 18% for articles with a sale value above ₹2,500 per piece

This falls under HSN Chapters 61 and 62. The 12% and 28% slabs were removed on the same date.

Two things follow, and both catch shops out.

The threshold is per piece, not per invoice. A bill with four kurtas at ₹800 each totals ₹3,200, but each piece is under ₹2,500, so the rate is 5%. Software that applies the rate to the invoice total rather than the item price gets this wrong on almost every multi-item bill. Accountune applies it per line item.

Discounts change the answer. A ₹2,700 kurta discounted to ₹2,400 crosses back under the threshold. The rate follows the actual transaction value, not the tag price, and Accountune recalculates it at billing.

Any product page or rate list still showing 12% on garments, or a ₹1,000 threshold instead of ₹2,500, has not been updated since September 2025. Several vendor pages ranking on these searches still show the old figures. It is worth checking on whichever tool you shortlist, because a wrong slab means a wrong GSTR-1 and an input tax credit mismatch for your B2B buyers. If you are mapping codes to your item list, the free HSN code finder handles the lookup, the readymade garment HSN code list covers Chapters 61 and 62, and the saree HSN code list covers sarees specifically.

Barcode tags and label printing for a garment counter

Most billing software will scan a barcode. Fewer will create one, and for a garment shop that is the step that actually matters, because clothing does not arrive with a usable code on it.

A packaged FMCG product comes with a manufacturer barcode already printed on it. A shirt from a Surat wholesaler arrives with a paper tag carrying a style number, sometimes a price, and nothing a scanner can read. Until you generate and attach your own tag, barcode billing is theoretical.

Three things to check on any tool you shortlist.

Can it generate a tag per variant, not per style? This is the whole point. If the software prints one code for "Cotton Kurta" and you have that kurta in five sizes and four colours, the scan tells the bill nothing useful and your stock still drifts. The tag has to encode the exact size and colour so that scanning it deducts that one variant.

Can it print in bulk from a purchase entry? When a lot of two hundred pieces arrives, you want to select that purchase and print two hundred tags in one go, in the right quantities per size, not create them one at a time.

Does it drive an ordinary label printer? You should not need a proprietary machine. A standard thermal label printer and a roll of stickers is the normal setup for an Indian garment counter.

Accountune generates barcodes per variant, so the code on the tag carries the exact size and colour and scanning it deducts that one variant rather than the style as a whole. At the counter it supports thermal receipt printers for a quick sale and A4 for a B2B buyer who needs a full tax invoice, from the same bill. Barcode scanning works with a USB scanner, a Bluetooth scanner or a phone camera, so a small shop does not need extra hardware to start. On bulk printing, ask any vendor to show you a full lot being tagged during the trial rather than taking it off a feature list.

Returns and size exchanges

Apparel runs the highest return rate of any Indian retail category, and most of it is not a refund. It is a customer coming back on Tuesday to swap a medium for a large.

That sounds trivial and it is where variant stock quietly breaks. If the return is recorded as a generic "Blue Shirt" coming back and a generic "Blue Shirt" going out, the size counts drift immediately. Within a month the system says you have four mediums when you have one, and the reorder decision that follows is wrong.

Three things to check before buying.

The return must reference the original invoice. Not a fresh entry. This matters for GST, because a credit note has to reference the original document, and it matters for the customer, because the price on the bill is the price of the exchange.

Stock must return to the exact variant. The medium goes back into medium stock, the large comes out of large stock. Two separate movements, not one net-zero adjustment.

Exchange and refund are different transactions. An even exchange moves stock without moving money. A refund or part-refund moves both, and the GST treatment differs.

One more thing worth asking a vendor, because it varies and nobody advertises it honestly: what happens to a piece that comes back unsellable. A garment returned with tags removed, worn, or sent for alteration is not the same as one that goes straight back on the rack, and if your software counts all three as normal stock, your available quantity is wrong every time. Ask to see it demonstrated rather than reading it off a feature list.

Accountune processes returns and exchanges against the original bill and returns each piece to its exact size and colour. Across the tools compared above, this ranges from a manual credit-note process to a basic return entry that does not preserve the variant.

Seasonal stock and the festive rush

Garment retail runs on seasons. There are two buying peaks, Diwali around October and November, and summer around March and April driven by school season and weddings, with clearance windows in January and mid-year. A shop that does not plan around these carries dead stock for months.

Good software supports this three ways.

Season tagging. Mark items as a specific collection and pull reports on that tag alone, so you can see exactly what has not moved from one buying batch.

Sell-through visibility. If you bought two hundred units of a kurta set for Diwali and sold one hundred and forty-three by mid-November, that is roughly 72%. Anything under 60% by mid-season is a signal to start discounting. Seeing this during the season rather than during December stock-taking is the whole point.

Prior-year comparison. Comparing this Diwali against last Diwali, variant by variant, is how experienced buyers stop over-ordering.

The festive week is also the stress test for everything else. Two hundred transactions in a day is where barcode POS speed matters, where printer reliability matters, and where a cloud tool's dependence on connectivity is felt most sharply. Check your connection before the season, not during it.

The reports that actually change what you buy next

A garment shop does not have a sales problem it can see. It has a buying problem it finds out about four months later, when the rack is full of the wrong sizes.

Total sales for the month tells you almost nothing here. Two shops can bill the same ₹4 lakh and be in completely different positions, one having sold evenly across its range and the other having sold out of medium in three designs while extra-large sat untouched. Only reporting at variant level separates those two shops.

Four reports do the work.

Size-wise sales. Every catchment has a size curve and it is not the one on the wholesaler's standard ratio. If medium and large are 70% of your sales and you keep buying the standard size set, you are funding your own dead stock. A size-wise report over one full season tells you what ratio to actually order.

Colour-wise sales. Colour moves faster than size and reverses more often. The report you want shows which shades cleared at full price and which only moved during the sale, because those are two very different signals for next season's order.

Brand-wise or supplier-wise margin. Turnover and profit are not the same league table. A brand that sells quickly on thin margin and heavy returns can rank first on sales and last on money kept. Ranking suppliers by margin rather than by revenue changes buying decisions more than any other single report.

Slow movers by age. Anything that has not moved in 30, 60 or 90 days, with the money tied up in it and the days since its last sale. Caught at 60 days a line clears at a small discount. Found at six months it clears near scrap value.

Because Accountune holds stock at variant level, sales read back the same way, so size and colour performance is visible per style rather than rolled into one number. It also reports profitability brand-wise, which is what lets you rank suppliers on margin instead of turnover. Dead stock is listed at 30, 60 and 90 days with value and days idle against each line.

Running two shops, or a shop and a godown

The moment a second location exists, the question stops being "how much stock do I have" and becomes "where is it, and can I move it before I reorder".

This is where a lot of garment shops quietly lose money. Branch one sells out of medium in a fast-moving design and orders more from the supplier. Branch two has eleven pieces of that exact variant sitting unsold. Nobody knows, because each branch keeps its own count.

What to look for.

Stock held location-wise, not just totalled. A single combined number across two shops is worse than useless, because it makes you feel covered when the pieces are in the wrong building.

Transfers recorded as movements. Sending stock from the godown to the counter should reduce one and increase the other in one entry, with a record of what went where and when. Adjusting both sides by hand is how counts drift.

One owner view across locations. You should be able to see both shops' sales on your phone without logging in twice, while the staff at each counter see only their own.

Separate GSTIN handling if your locations are in different states. Two states means two registrations and two sets of returns, and the software has to keep those books apart.

Accountune tracks stock godown-wise and location-wise with transfers between them, so a second shop or a godown is a separate count you can move stock between rather than a number you keep on paper. Each staff member gets a role-based login on the paid plans, so counter staff see billing while purchase cost and profit stay with the owner, and every action is logged against the user who performed it.

If you also sell wholesale

Plenty of garment businesses are not purely retail. A shop in a cloth market sells to walk-in customers at the front and supplies four boutiques on credit from the back, and a readymade dealer may run entirely on bulk orders to retailers. The software requirements are genuinely different.

Rate per party, not one price list. A wholesale buyer taking a hundred pieces does not pay the counter rate. The software should hold a rate against the party so the correct price loads on the invoice rather than being typed in and argued over.

Bulk billing by size ratio. A wholesale order is rarely a list of individual pieces. It is a design in a ratio across sizes, repeated over several colours. Entering that as forty separate lines every time is what pushes wholesalers back to Excel.

A ledger per buyer with real outstanding. Wholesale runs on credit. Every invoice, payment, return and adjustment has to sit in one party account that is correct without a manual tally at month end.

Purchase orders on the buying side. You are ordering from mills and manufacturers in lots with delivery dates, and matching what arrives against what was ordered.

E-way bills as a routine step. Bulk consignments crossing state lines need them, and generating one should be part of raising the invoice, not a separate visit to the portal.

Accountune covers the account side of this properly: a ledger per buyer and supplier that updates on every invoice, payment and return, automatic WhatsApp reminders at 7, 15 and 30 days past due, a purchase order module for the buying side, multi-unit billing so a bale to a retailer and a piece to a walk-in sit on the same system, and e-invoice IRN and e-way bill generation on the paid plans. On party-wise rates and size-ratio bulk entry, ask to see your own order entered during the trial, because this is the part where products differ most and feature lists tell you least. If wholesale is the larger half of your business, the GST billing software for wholesalers page covers that side in more depth.

How to switch from Excel

The fear is usually about old data. You do not need to move it. Start clean from a chosen date with your current opening stock.

1. Pick a go-live date. Start of a month is easiest, because stock-taking aligns with it.

2. Count physical stock by variant. "Blue Shirt - M: 24, Blue Shirt - L: 17." This becomes your opening inventory.

3. Build the product master with the variant matrix. For a few hundred designs, plan several days of part-time work rather than an afternoon. This is the step people underestimate.

4. Configure GST by HSN. Set your textile HSN codes with the 5% and 18% rule against the ₹2,500-per-piece threshold. Accountune applies it automatically once configured.

5. Enter opening quantities per variant.

6. Print and attach tags. Generate barcode tags for every variant before you start billing, not after. Tagging half the shop is worse than tagging none of it.

7. Test ten sample bills. Check the GST split across the threshold, stock deduction per variant, one size exchange, and WhatsApp sharing before going live.

8. Go live and archive the old files. Do not delete them. Old invoice queries still come.

Accountune imports items, parties and opening balances from Excel or CSV, including exports from Tally, Vyapar and myBillBook, and support helps with the mapping during the trial. Do the switch in a slow week, never during a festive run.

Final verdict

For the large majority of Indian garment, cloth and apparel shops, from a single counter to three outlets, a few hundred to a couple of thousand designs and a team of two to six, Accountune is the best billing software for a garment shop. The variant matrix, the automatic GST split across the ₹2,500 threshold, multi-unit billing for fabric and readymade together, returns that go back to the exact variant, barcode tag printing, variant-level sales reports and WhatsApp sharing are all in one product on a free plan at ₹0 and paid plans from ₹799 a year.

The exceptions are narrow. A shop that genuinely cannot rely on its internet needs offline billing, and Vyapar is the only option here that has it. A business with a full-time accountant embedded in Tally has a defensible reason to stay. A chain with five or more outlets and an IT team is looking at an ERP rather than at a billing product.

The fastest way to decide is to test on your own stock. Start the free trial, 4 days with full access and no card, or book a demo if you would rather be walked through it. If you also run a general retail counter alongside apparel, the retail billing software page covers that side, and the garment store billing software page has the product detail.

About Accountune

Accountune is a cloud GST billing, inventory and accounting platform built in Jaipur since 2017 and used by 12,000+ Indian small businesses across retail, wholesale, medical, hardware and apparel trades. It runs on web, Android and iOS from one login, with a free plan at ₹0 and paid plans from ₹799 a year. See the garment store billing software page for the product detail.