#MSME Status Declaration and 45-Day Payment Notice

STM-IN-018 | Version 1.0.0 | Last Modified On 31 July 2026

#Purpose

Edsol Edtech Pvt. Ltd. is a Micro or Small Enterprise registered under the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act, 2006. That status changes the legal character of the payment term from a negotiated commercial preference into a statutory obligation with a tax consequence for the buyer.

This declaration is issued proactively with every proposal, not with the first overdue invoice. Issued early it is a compliance service to the hospital's finance team and its chartered accountant: it tells them, before they build the vendor master, what their own auditor will later require. Issued late it reads as a demand.

Tone rule, binding on anyone editing this document. Courteous, factual, helpful. State the statute and let it do the work. Never write a sentence that reads as a threat, and never quantify interest in the proposal-stage version of this document. The interest computation belongs in the day-60 escalation letter in Part 4, addressed to a person whose job it is to care about it.

---

#Part 1: The declaration

1. Status. Edsol Edtech Pvt. Ltd., CIN [TO BE SUPPLIED], is registered on the Udyam Registration Portal maintained by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises as a Micro Enterprise, Udyam Registration Number [TO BE SUPPLIED], registered on Pensieve udyam registration date. It is a service enterprise. The registration is verifiable by any person on the Udyam portal, without login, using the Udyam Registration Number above. The Udyam Registration Certificate is at REG-IN-006 and accompanies this declaration.

2. Consequence: the payment period. Section 15 of the MSMED Act, 2006 provides that where a supplier which is a micro or small enterprise renders services to a buyer, the buyer shall make payment on or before the date agreed in writing, and that the agreed date shall not exceed forty-five (45) days from the day of acceptance or the day of deemed acceptance. Where there is no agreement in writing, payment falls due within fifteen (15) days.

3. What Pensieve Labs asks for. Payment terms of thirty (30) days from acceptance or deemed acceptance. That is fifteen days inside the statutory ceiling and is offered deliberately, so that Customer legal name's finance team retains a buffer against its own internal processing time.

4. Acceptance and deemed acceptance. Under the Act, the period runs from acceptance, which is the day of actual rendering of the service unless the buyer gives written objection specifying the defect within fifteen (15) days, in which case it runs from the day the objection is resolved. The agreement between the parties accordingly provides that deliverables are deemed accepted on the fifteenth (15th) day after delivery unless Customer legal name gives written notice of specific, material non-conformity within that period. See MSA-IN-001.

5. Interest on delayed payment. Section 16 of the Act provides that where payment is not made within the period in section 15, the buyer is liable to pay compound interest, with monthly rests, at three times the bank rate notified by the Reserve Bank of India, from the appointed day. This is a statutory entitlement and, under the Act, it cannot be waived by agreement. Pensieve Labs states it here for completeness and does not seek to negotiate it.

6. Deductibility: the reason this matters to Customer legal name's own tax position. Where a sum payable to a micro or small enterprise is not paid within the period specified in section 15 of the MSMED Act, the deduction for that sum is allowed to the buyer only in the year of actual payment, and not in the year of accrual. This rule was introduced as section 43B(h) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 with effect from 1 April 2024 and is carried forward, in substance unchanged, into the Income-tax Act, 2025 which came into force on 1 April 2026. The consequence is that a delayed payment moves the deduction into the following year and increases the buyer's taxable income for the current one. [UNVERIFIED: the sub-clause reference within the Income-tax Act, 2025 should be confirmed against the bare Act before it is cited by number in correspondence. The substance is well established; only the numbering is uncertain.]

7. Disclosure in Customer legal name's accounts. Section 22 of the MSMED Act requires a buyer to disclose, in its annual financial statements, the principal and interest due and unpaid to micro and small enterprises. Amounts inadmissible on account of late payment to a micro or small enterprise are also reportable by the buyer's tax auditor. Paying within the statutory period removes both.

8. Non-deductibility of the interest. Section 23 of the MSMED Act disallows the deduction of interest payable under section 16 in computing the buyer's income. Interest under the Act is therefore borne out of post-tax money.

9. Preservation of rights. Nothing in any agreement between the parties limits, excludes or prejudices Edsol Edtech Pvt. Ltd.'s rights under the MSMED Act, 2006, including its right to refer a dispute concerning delayed payment to the Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Council under section 18. The dispute resolution clause of MSA-IN-001 expressly preserves this.

10. Change of status. Edsol Edtech Pvt. Ltd. will notify Customer legal name in writing within thirty (30) days if it ceases to be a micro or small enterprise, since the rights described above would then cease to apply.

---

#Part 2: The invoice and proforma footer block

Reproduced on every proforma invoice and every tax invoice issued to a customer in India. It is short by design: the full declaration is attached once, at proposal stage; the footer keeps the fact in front of whoever processes the payment.

MSME NOTICE. Edsol Edtech Pvt. Ltd. is a Micro Enterprise registered under the MSMED Act, 2006 (Udyam Registration Number [TO BE SUPPLIED]). Payment for this invoice is governed by section 15 of that Act. Date of acceptance or deemed acceptance: Deal acceptance date. Agreed payment date: Computed msme payment date (30 days). Statutory latest date: Computed msme statutory date (45 days). Full declaration: https://trust.pensievelabs.org/documents/STM-IN-018.

Attach the Udyam Registration Certificate itself to every invoice, not a reference to it. It is one page and it defeats the standard accounts-payable answer, "we did not know you were an MSE."

---

#Part 3: Computing the dates

The two dates in the footer are computed, never typed. Both are tokens; the computation is stated here so that it can be implemented once and audited.

Two operational rules that decide whether any of this works.

1. Record the delivery date and the acceptance date in the deal record, on the day they occur. The statutory clock runs from acceptance, and acceptance is a fact that must be evidenced. A delivery note, a go-live certificate or a signed milestone acknowledgement is the evidence; an email saying "we have deployed" is not.
2. File the outward GST return early. A hospital's accounts department will not release payment on an invoice it cannot see in its own inward-supply statement. The filing date for Edsol Edtech Pvt. Ltd.'s outward return is therefore on the critical path to cash, irrespective of the MSMED position. The filing discipline is at STM-IN-019.

---

#Part 4: The escalation ladder

Four steps, each with the wording to use. The tone is constant: helpful, specific, addressed to the person whose job the consequence lands on.

#Day 40: courteous reminder, to the Finance Controller (not to accounts payable)

Subject: Invoice Invoice number (statutory payment date Computed msme statutory date)

Dear [name],

Invoice Invoice number dated Invoice date was accepted on Deal acceptance date. The statutory payment date under section 15 of the MSMED Act, 2006 is Computed msme statutory date.

We wanted to flag this in good time so that the amount remains deductible in your current tax year, and so that no disclosure arises under section 22 of that Act in your annual accounts. Our Udyam Registration Certificate is attached again for your records.

If anything is outstanding at our end that is holding the payment, please tell me today and I will resolve it.

#Day 60: escalation to the Chief Financial Officer, with the computation attached

Attach a one-page interest computation on the section 16 basis: three times the Reserve Bank of India bank rate then notified, compounded with monthly rests, from the appointed day. State it as a computation, not as a demand. Repeat the two consequences: the deduction moves into the following year, and the interest is not deductible at all.

#Day 90: reference to the Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Council

Filing on the MSME Samadhaan portal is free, online, and requires no lawyer. The Council conciliates first and may then take up the reference as an arbitration. An application to set aside an award of the Council is not entertained unless the buyer first deposits seventy-five per cent (75%) of the awarded amount. In practice the filing itself usually resolves the matter.

[UNVERIFIED: the interaction between an institutional arbitration clause in the agreement and a section 18 reference has produced conflicting High Court authority. The preservation clause in MSA-IN-001 is drafted to protect the position; obtain counsel's view before relying on it in a contested matter.]

#Never

• Never waive the section 16 interest in the contract. A waiver is unenforceable against a micro or small enterprise in any event, and writing one signals that the entire framework is negotiable. Choosing not to press the interest on a particular occasion is a goodwill card worth playing once, in writing, as a decision, not a term.
• Never agree a payment term longer than 45 days. To the extent it exceeds the statutory ceiling it is void against a micro or small supplier, so agreeing to it buys nothing and concedes the framing.
• Never send the day-60 or day-90 step without the day-40 step having been sent. The ladder works because each rung is unsurprising.

---

#Part 5: What to say when the hospital pushes back

---

#Related documents

---

#Change history

---

STM-IN-018 v1.0.0 | Last Modified On 31 July 2026 | Edsol Edtech Pvt. Ltd. | Udyam [TO BE SUPPLIED]