Billing counter › Thermal printer

Printing bills on a thermal receipt printer

A thermal printer needs no ink and prints a bill in a second. Here is how to choose one and set up the browser so receipts come out clean.

58 mm or 80 mm?

	58 mm (2 inch)	80 mm (3 inch)
Fits on a line	About 32 characters	About 48 characters
Good for	Small shops, short bills, portable printers	Supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants, GST bills with HSN
Paper cost	Lower per bill	A little higher, easier to read

Pick the same size under Paper size in Bill settings. A5 and A4 are there too, for a customer who wants a full-page bill.

Print settings (do this once)

1. Install the printer’s driver on the computer, or its print app on an Android phone. Many Bluetooth printers work through the phone’s print service.
2. Press Save and print. In the print window pick the thermal printer.
3. Set Margins to None and untick Headers and footers, so the browser does not add the date and web address.
4. Set the paper size to the roll width (58 mm or 80 mm) if the printer asks. Leave Scale at 100% or Default.
5. The browser remembers these settings for the next bill.

Nothing prints from a phone? Press Share instead: it makes a PDF you can send on WhatsApp or open in the printer’s own app.

Thermal paper fades. Your records must not.

Receipts on thermal paper fade in months, faster in heat and sunlight. A registered business must keep its accounts and records for 72 months from the due date of the annual return for that year (Section 36 of the CGST Act). Every bill made here is saved in the browser, so you can reprint any bill from Saved bills. Keep that safe with a backup file: open My data and press Save a backup file regularly, and keep the file in two places.

Making the receipt look right

• Upload a simple black-and-white logo; colour logos print grey on thermal paper.
• Use the Notes box for your return or exchange line, for example "Exchange within 7 days with this bill".
• Keep item names short so they fit on one line of a 58 mm roll.