It will be much like the last two weekends that she spent in office and, by all accounts, most weekends in July are going to be working as several departments across companies, from finance and IT to production and supplies, prepare to be fully compliant with the new taxation regime. "All leaves have been cancelled and people have been working every day since June 10. They can take compensatory off and go on vacation in August," said Sunil Wadhwa, CEO of Groupe SEB India, which acquired Maharaja Whiteline and has also introduced Tefal in the country.

While companies have ordered software and initiated steps, Wadhwa’s team is dealing with a checklist of 72 action points. Its ERP vendor is going to release a software patch next week. Around the same time, the government’s GST Network (GSTN), which is putting in place the technology backbone, will provide the spreadsheet for businesses to record their sales.

With rates having been finalised only a few weeks ago, the contracts and prices are still being renegotiated. Emami CFO Naresh Bhansali said, "Yes, we are working this weekend. But GST is something we have been preparing for several months. As and when clarifications and rules kept coming in we continuously updated ourselves. Teams across legal, compliance, procurement, operations, finance and IT are working relentlessly to make this happen. It’s a new change which will impact everyone’s life from July 1 and we want to ensure that the show goes on."

Most vendors are still not registered with GSTN. "We will be spending sleepless nights for the next one week before GST kicks in. Out of 5,000 distributors across India, 3,000 are GST compliant. The remaining 2,000 sub stockists will become GST compliant by June 25, so that we can start billing under the new tax regime by July 1," said Ullas Kamath, joint MD of Jyothy Laboratories, which has formed four teams, one each in the four regions to make this happen. "We have also brought down our stock pipelines from the earlier three-six weeks to two weeks... We expect things to settle in the first two weeks of GST’s launch," said Kamath.

Pratik Jain, who heads the indirect tax practice at consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), said companies are tackling a lot of uncertainty, which are still there — from the Jammu & Kashmir government’s failure to enact laws to the absence of GST registration number for vendors. "Everyone is working to ensure that they are compliant from Day 1. Business restructuring will happen later in many cases," he said.

Once GST gets out of the way, companies are planning measures to de-stress the over-worked lot of employees. S Venkatesh, president-group HR at RPG Enterprisessaid, "I am sure that those who are part of the taskforce, which was set up for GST at RPG Enterprises, would be working through this weekend to ensure smooth execution. Although we do not see anybody under any undue pressure due to GST because we started preparations a year in advance and much of the work has been accomplished, we recognise the additional efforts put in by the team. They can seek compensation as per our flexi-work policy. I am sure later, the taskforce will celebrate the achievement of this key milestone in some form."

Jyothy Laboratories’ Kamath said its 200-odd employees in Mumbai and Bengaluru are planning an outing in the last week of July. The company is also looking to offer financial incentives. For most others, the focus is currently on smooth implementation. "Celebration will happen only when sales zoom, the first task for everyone is to ensure continuity," said Emami’s Bhansali.

 24 Jun 2017, 11:36 AM