A look at the room, before you open it.
Twelve months of airline and hotel GST audited against your filings. The recovery map we return tells you what you should have claimed, what you can still claim, and what's gone. Yours, whether you engage further or not.
Four stages. Two weeks. One document at the end.
The diagnostic is a structured engagement, not a pitch. We ask for a defined set of inputs, run the audit through our recovery engine, route the edge cases to our tax desk, and return a recovery map. Your finance team's involvement is roughly two hours total.
NDA & intake
We sign a mutual NDA before anything else. You then share a twelve-month airline spend report, your filed GST returns, and the list of your registered GSTINs across states. Hotel invoices we pull ourselves from the e-invoice portal, your GSTINs are the only input we need for the hotel side.
Engine sweep
TravelSuite ingests your data and reconciles it against the GST network. Every airline invoice traced. Every hotel e-invoice retrieved from the portal. Every claim status checked. The engine flags every gap, mismatch, and recoverable credit.
Tax desk review
Our tax desk reviews every flagged item. Disputed GSTINs, stretched ITC windows, hotel place-of-supply exposure, B2C-on-B2B errors. A qualified Chartered Accountant takes an opinion on each. Nothing goes into the recovery map without a written position.
Recovery map returned
A single document. Bound, branded, delivered by the firm. We walk you through it on a call. What's recoverable, what's gone, what to do next. You decide whether to engage further or not. No follow-up sales pressure.
One document. Everything we found. Nothing we didn't.
What's inside the recovery map
Every diagnostic is bespoke to your travel programme. The structure below is what every map contains, regardless of size.
- Executive summaryOne page for the CFO. Total recoverable, total lost, recommended next move.
- Carrier-level airline analysisEvery airline you flew on, reconciled against your filings, with carrier-specific recovery quanta.
- Hotel programme analysisMulti-state GSTIN exposure, e-invoice retrieval gaps, place-of-supply leakage by state.
- ITC window statusWhat's recoverable now, what closes within 90 days, what's already past T+180.
- Audit defence positionsTax desk opinions on every flagged dispute, defensible at scrutiny.
- Recommended engagement modelVolume-based, per-invoice, or contingent, based on your programme's shape.
- Next-step memoWhat to do in the next 30 / 90 / 180 days, whether or not you engage further with us.
What it costs, what it commits, what it doesn't.
Twelve months of data, one NDA, two hours of your team's time.
A signed mutual NDA. Twelve months of travel spend reports. Filed GST returns for the same window. Your registered GSTINs. A 90-minute review call at the end. That's it.
No fee. No engagement letter. No exclusivity.
The diagnostic is on us. You don't sign an engagement letter for it. You're not committed to recover with us afterwards. If our recovery map convinces you to engage another firm, the map is still yours.
You decide. We propose, but you choose.
The recovery map ends with a recommended engagement model, volume-based, per-invoice, or contingent. If you engage, the diagnostic fee (₹0) is credited against the first month's work. If you don't, that's also fine.
The questions every CFO asks first.
Why is the diagnostic free?
Because we know what we're going to find. Most travel programmes have meaningful unrecovered ITC sitting inside them, we've audited enough to be confident about the pattern. The diagnostic is how we prove that to you with your own data, not ours.
If we find nothing material, you've spent two hours and learned that. If we find something, you have a defensible recovery map and a real choice about what to do. Either way, the diagnostic pays for itself for us in roughly one in three engagements that result, and that's enough.
What data do we actually have to share?
Three things. (1) An airline travel spend report for the last twelve months — tickets, the standard export your TMC or finance team already produces. (2) Your filed GSTR-2B and GSTR-3B for the same window. (3) Your registered GSTINs across entities and states.
For hotels, we don't need invoices from you, we retrieve every hotel e-invoice directly from the GST e-invoice portal, authenticated against your registered GSTINs. Your spend report is used as a coverage cross-check, not as an invoice source.
We don't need passenger names, ticket-level personal data, or anything that identifies your employees. The audit operates at the invoice level, not the traveller level.
How is our data handled?
Under a mutual NDA signed before any data is exchanged. Stored on encrypted infrastructure, in India, accessible only to the team running your engagement. Purged from working systems within 90 days of diagnostic completion if you don't engage further.
Our security and privacy positions are documented in full at our security policy and PII policy.
What if we already work with a Big Four practice?
Most of our clients do. We sit alongside Big Four engagements, not against them. A generalist tax practice covers everything; a specialist practice covers one thing in depth. Travel GST recovery sits in the second column. Our work and theirs rarely overlap.
If anything, we often work directly with your Big Four practice on edge-case positions. The recovery map is something you can share with them at your discretion.
Will the diagnostic catch every hotel invoice?
Every hotel invoice that exists on the GST e-invoice portal, yes. Hotel e-invoicing is mandatory above the GST turnover threshold, which covers most branded properties and chains your programme uses. Properties below the threshold don't raise e-invoices, so they don't appear on the portal, and we don't capture them.
The recovery map shows this explicitly: invoices captured, properties out of scope, and the spend on those out-of-scope properties so you can decide whether to request manual invoices from those hotels separately or accept the gap. We don't paper over what we can't see.
What if our travel programme is small?
We don't take recovery engagements under ₹5 crore in annual airline and hotel spend. The unit economics don't make sense for either side. If you're below that threshold, the diagnostic may still surface something useful, but if the recoverable quantum is also small, we'll say so on the call and recommend a different path (typically a per-invoice TMC partnership).
How quickly can we start?
NDA out the same day you reach out. Data intake call within three working days. Engine sweep starts as soon as data lands. Recovery map returned in fourteen working days from data intake.
If the timing is sensitive, ITC window closing, audit pending, board meeting approaching, tell us on the first call and we'll prioritise accordingly.
A look at the room, before you decide what's inside.
Tell us about your travel programme. We'll send the NDA the same day, walk through the intake on a call, and start the audit. Fourteen working days later, you'll have a recovery map.