What is already captured
Your GSTIN and the buyer's, invoice number and date, taxable value and tax, HSN codes per line, place of despatch and delivery, and — from the delivery record — the transporter, vehicle number and driver. Every field the portal asks for is on one screen when you raise a bill with a delivery attached. You are reading from one place and entering in another rather than assembling it from a pad and a memory.
Stock transfers count too
The requirement is about movement of goods over the threshold, not about a sale. A transfer to your own second godown needs an e-way bill just as a sale does, which shops routinely miss. Because a branch transfer here is a recorded document with values and a vehicle on it, the data is available in the same form as for a sale.
Part B and vehicle changes
The part that catches people out is a vehicle changing mid-journey — a breakdown, a transhipment at a transporter's godown. The e-way bill has to be updated with the new number or the consignment is travelling uncovered. Because the delivery record holds the vehicle against the specific load, you know exactly which bill to update rather than working it out from a driver's phone call.
Keeping the documents consistent
Penalties in practice come less from a missing e-way bill than from documents that disagree — a vehicle number that differs from the challan, a quantity that does not match the invoice, a value that does not tie. When the invoice, the challan and the e-way bill data all come from one record they cannot drift apart, and a roadside check stays uneventful.
Validity and distance
An e-way bill is valid for roughly one day per two hundred kilometres of the approximate distance entered, which is generous for a city delivery and tight on a long run into the hills or the north-east. Getting the distance right matters in both directions: understate it and the bill expires mid-journey, overstate it and you are inviting a question. Where a load is genuinely going to take longer than the validity allows — a road closure, a transhipment — the bill has to be extended before it lapses rather than after.