ASI / ASISSE Notice? Here's What Your Business Actually Needs to Do
You got a notice. Maybe it showed up last week. Maybe your accounts team dropped it on your desk this morning with a "do you know what this is?" look on their face.
First thing most businesses want to know: is this even real?
It is. Completely.
What Is This Notice, and Where Is It Coming From?
Since April 2026, the National Statistical Office has been dispatching ASI/ASISSE Notices to factories, Private Limited Companies, LLPs, and public sector units across India. These notices come from MoSPI — the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation — and they carry statutory weight under the Collection of Statistics Act, 2008.
This isn't a survey invitation. It isn't optional. And it isn't related to your GST filings or Income Tax assessments — more on that in a moment.
ASI vs. ASISSE — They're Not the Same Thing
Here's what a lot of businesses miss when they first call us. These are two separate surveys, targeting two entirely different sets of enterprises. Getting them confused wastes time.
ASI — Annual Survey of Industries has been running since 1959. It targets the registered manufacturing sector: factories under the Factories Act, 1948, bidi and cigar establishments, electricity undertakings, and industrial units broadly. For over six decades, ASI data has directly fed India's national accounts — GDP, GVA, employment statistics. If you run a factory, there's a reasonable chance your establishment has been part of an ASI sample at some point, even if your finance team never dealt with it directly.
ASISSE — Annual Survey of Incorporated Services Sector Enterprises is a different story entirely. It launched in April 2026 — the first structured, annual survey of India's formal services sector, ever. It covers Private Limited Companies, Public Limited Companies, LLPs, and PSUs operating in services: IT and ITES, trade, transport, hospitality, education, healthcare, finance, insurance, real estate, professional services. Proprietorships and partnerships don't fall under it. But if you're a company or LLP in any of those sectors and NSO has selected your GSTIN — you're in, and you're obligated.
Both surveys run under the Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 (as amended in 2017) and the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023. Sampling happens at the GSTIN level using the GSTN database, with NIC 2025 for activity classification and CPC 3.0 for product and service coding.
And the data protection question always comes up. The Act legally prohibits NSO from sharing anything you submit with the Income Tax Department, GST authorities, SEBI, or RBI for any enforcement purpose. Your submitted data goes into computing economic indicators. That's it. The protection is statutory — not just a policy commitment.
Does Your Business Need to File?
Only if you've received a notice. That's the short answer.
NSO selects enterprises through a sampling process. No notice, no obligation — at least for this round. But if a notice has arrived with portal login credentials and a filing deadline, that obligation is legally binding.
A few things that trip businesses up:
The selection unit is the State-level GSTIN, not your company entity as a whole. So, if you operate across five states with five separate GSTINs, it's entirely possible that two of those GSTINs get selected and three don't. Each selected GSTIN must be filed as a separate return. You can't club data across GSTINs. You can't submit consolidated company-wide figures in place of GSTIN-specific data. The portal validates at the individual GSTIN level — it will catch the discrepancy, and it will reject the submission.
For ASISSE's first round, approximately 1,21,350 enterprises have been selected nationally. If you're reading this after receiving a notice, your business is one of them.
What Happens If You Ignore It?
The Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 is direct on this.
| Default Stage | Penalty |
| Failure or refusal to furnish information | Up to ₹5,000 (companies) / ₹1,000 (individuals) |
| Non-compliance continuing beyond 14 days | Up to ₹5,000 per day (companies) / ₹1,000 per day (individuals) |
| Wilful submission of false information | Imprisonment up to 6 months and/or fine |
| Recovery mechanism | As arrears of land revenue under Section 15C |
Here's the part most people miss entirely: paying the penalty doesn't remove the obligation to file. The return is still mandatory. The penalty is on top of, not instead of, the filing requirement. So, you'd be paying the fine and still having to submit.
And beyond the financial penalties — businesses that miss deadlines or submit inconsistent data tend to land on NSO's radar for field verification visits in subsequent years. That means an official arriving in person to cross-check your records. Entirely avoidable if you file correctly the first time.
How Exim Advisory Handles the Filing
The questionnaire itself isn't complicated to read. But reconciling your responses — accurately, across GST returns, audited financials, payroll records, and asset schedules — takes more time and precision than most finance teams can manage in the middle of their regular workload.
So, here's our process:
Notice Verification First. Before anything else, we confirm the notice is legitimate, verify the GSTIN(s) selected, check the reference period, and map your exact filing obligation. Errors do occur — wrong GSTIN, wrong reference period — and catching those early prevents a lot of unnecessary work.
Block-by-Block Data Preparation. The questionnaire is divided into data blocks. For ASISSE and ASI, the key ones are:
- Block 1 — Enterprise identity, ownership type, and activity classification
- Block 3 — Fixed assets, capital work-in-progress, and investments
- Block 4 — Working capital, borrowings, and loan positions
- Block 5 — Employment data broken down by gender, plus total labour costs
- Blocks 6A & 6B — Intermediate consumption items, coded using CPC 3.0
- Block 7A — Receipts, output, and revenue data
- Blocks 11 & 12 — Digital technology usage and IT infrastructure
Every block gets mapped directly to your audited financials. Nothing enters the portal that we haven't traced back to a source document.
Reconciliation Before Submission. This is the step that separates a clean filing from one that generates NSO queries later. We reconcile your GST turnover, P&L, balance sheet, payroll register, and fixed asset schedule — with each other, and with the portal's expected data format. Any mismatch surfaces here, before submission.
GSTIN-Level Apportionment for Multi-State Businesses. If your company runs consolidated books covering multiple states, we extract the figures for each specific GSTIN. Turnover, employees, assets — broken out carefully, not estimated.
Portal Filing and Validation. We handle the actual submission through the official MoSPI secure portal, running the portal's own validation checks, reviewing auto-aggregated data under Block 9, and confirming submission within your deadline.
Post-Filing Support. If NSO field officers follow up or request access to supporting records, we assist throughout. For recurring clients, we set up an annual compliance calendar so the next round doesn't catch anyone off guard.
What Documents You'll Need
Getting these organised before we start speeds up everything considerably:
- Audited Balance Sheet and P&L for FY 2024–25
- Trial balance
- GST returns and GSTIN-wise turnover breakdowns
- Payroll register — including headcount split by gender
- Fixed asset schedule with depreciation
- Working capital and loan statements
- Production records and raw material consumption data (ASI filers)
- Electricity and fuel cost data
- Factory licence (ASI filers)
- NIC 2025 classification of your main business activity
If some of these aren't immediately available — incomplete audit, delayed year-end close — we can work around it. But the earlier we start, the cleaner the filing.
Industries We Support
Exim Advisory works with businesses across:
Manufacturing and industrial units — IT and ITES companies — Logistics and warehousing — Retail and e-commerce — Pharmaceuticals and healthcare — Construction and infrastructure (incorporated entities) — Professional and financial services — Hospitality and tourism — Educational institutions — MSMEs through to large corporates, across all states and union territories.
Frequently Asked Questions
The notice mentions a portal login and says it's from NSO. Could this be a scam?
No. ASISSE was officially launched via a PIB Press Release dated 6 April 2026 (Release ID: 2249336). To verify independently: check that the portal URL is on the mospi.gov.in domain, and cross-check the Field Office name and contact in your notice against NSO's published directory. Both should match exactly.
My finance team thinks this is related to GST or Income Tax scrutiny.
It isn't. The Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 legally prohibits NSO from sharing anything you submit with the Income Tax Department, GST authorities, SEBI, RBI, or any regulatory body for enforcement use. What you submit stays within the statistical system. This protection is statutory.
We haven't received a notice. Do we still need to file?
No. Filing is mandatory only for enterprises NSO has specifically selected and notified. No notice, no obligation — for this round.
What realistically happens if we ignore the notice?
For companies, penalties begin at up to ₹5,000. After 14 days of continued non-compliance, that becomes up to ₹5,000 per day. Wilfully submitting false information carries a risk of imprisonment up to 6 months. And paying the penalty still doesn't remove the obligation to file — both apply simultaneously.
We have GSTINs registered in four different states. Do we file for all of them?
Only for the GSTINs for which you've received a notice. If NSO has selected multiple GSTINs separately, each one gets its own independent return. Don't merge or consolidate data across GSTINs — the portal is built to catch exactly that.
Can Exim Advisory handle the full process?
Yes — from notice verification through to final portal submission and any post-submission queries from NSO field offices. You hand us the source documents; we take it from there.
Don't Let the Deadline Run Away from You
Penalties under the Collection of Statistics Act don't wait for a convenient time. And the filing itself requires careful financial reconciliation — not the sort of work you want rushed through the night before a deadline.
If your company or LLP has received an ASI or ASISSE Notice from MoSPI or NSO, get in touch with Exim Advisory now. We'll verify your notice, confirm what's needed, and manage the entire filing so your return goes in accurately and on time.
Contact us at: info@eximadvisory.com
Call:+91- 9582067662
Whatsapp:- 9582067662