How to File an MSME Samadhaan Complaint Online: Step-by-Step

So what is an MSME Samadhaan complaint, exactly?

It's a reference under Section 18 of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act, 2006 (the MSMED Act), filed online. Section 18 lets a party to a dispute over money due under Section 17 (the price of goods or services, plus interest) take it to the Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Council. The Ministry of MSME launched the Samadhaan portal in October 2017. The idea was simple. Suppliers could file from their own desk instead of carrying a fat file to the Council's office.

In June 2025 the Ministry added an online dispute resolution portal for delayed payment cases, linked to Samadhaan. Filing, uploads, notices and hearings all happen online there, and there's an optional settlement window before the Council takes the case up. People still call it a Samadhaan complaint. Legally it's still the same Section 18 reference. That's why an older guide may show you screens that don't match.

It isn't a police complaint. It isn't a grievance to a ministry either. It starts a legal process that ends, if the buyer won't settle, in an arbitral award you can enforce like a court decree. So what you type into the form matters.

Who's allowed to file on the Samadhaan portal?

A supplier under Section 2(n) of the Act, meaning a micro or small enterprise with Udyam registration. Medium enterprises can't use Chapter V. Under the limits in force from 1 April 2025, micro means investment in plant and machinery or equipment up to Rs 2.5 crore and turnover up to Rs 10 crore. Small goes up to Rs 25 crore and Rs 100 crore. Your Udyam certificate shows both your category and the date you registered.

That date is where buyers attack. In Silpi Industries (2021) and Mahakali Foods (2022), the Supreme Court held that a supplier who registered after signing the contract can't claim the Act's benefits for that contract. Then in NBCC (India) Ltd v. State of West Bengal (January 2025), a two-judge bench doubted that view and referred it to a larger bench. Until the larger bench rules, assume the buyer will object if your registration came after the purchase order. We explain the position in our note on whether registering on Udyam after the contract still helps.

Two other groups should stop and think first. Retail and wholesale traders can get Udyam registration, but their benefit was confined to priority sector lending, and High Courts have held they can't use the Council. Read whether a trader can use the Facilitation Council. Service providers can file. They just need decent proof that the buyer accepted the work.

Sort these out before you even open the portal

Three things save most of the grief. First, make sure the mobile number and email on your Udyam registration are current, because the login OTP goes there. If your old CA registered the unit with his own number years ago, update Udyam before anything else. Second, pin down the buyer properly. Its legal name exactly as on its GST registration, its GSTIN, the registered or billing address, and an email somebody actually reads. A complaint against a brand name or a branch office just gets stuck.

Third, work out what you're owed. Make a sheet with one row per unpaid invoice: number, date, amount, delivery or completion date, acceptance date, any rejection within 15 days, part payments with dates, and the balance. Section 16 interest runs from the appointed day (or the day after the agreed date, which can never be more than 45 days after acceptance) and compounds monthly at three times the RBI bank rate. After the RBI policy of 7 October 2026 the bank rate is 5.75 percent. That makes the current Section 16 rate 17.25 percent a year. Earlier periods carry other rates, and the figure moves, so check it on the day. Our worked example on calculating MSME delayed payment interest takes you through it.

Advocate B.K. Singh usually tells clients to send a short demand notice, with the invoice sheet attached, before filing. Section 18 doesn't require it. But the buyer's reply often gives away the defence it'll run, say a quality complaint or a disputed debit note. You can answer that in your complaint instead of hearing it for the first time at the hearing. A well-drafted legal notice for recovery of dues also helps if you end up in a civil suit later.

Filing the Samadhaan complaint online, one step at a time

The portal's screens and button names change every so often. What follows is what the filing involves. Go by the labels you actually see on the day.

1. Open the portal and pick the seller option

   Go to the Ministry of MSME's Samadhaan or ODR portal and choose the option for a seller or supplier filing a delayed payment case. Use a laptop or desktop. Uploading forty documents from a phone is misery.

2. Log in with your Udyam Registration Number

   Type in your Udyam number. An OTP goes to the mobile and email registered on Udyam. Once you're in, the portal pulls your enterprise name, address and category straight from Udyam. Check them on screen.

3. Fill in the buyer's details

   The buyer's legal name, address, state, GSTIN, mobile number and email. If it asks for the type of buyer (private company, central or state government body, public sector undertaking and so on), pick the right one. One application covers one buyer.

4. Add your invoices

   Enter each unpaid invoice with its number, date, amount and, where the form asks, the delivery or acceptance date. Several invoices against the same buyer can go into one application. Don't throw in invoices raised under contracts older than your Udyam registration without taking advice first.

5. Enter the principal and interest

   Put in the principal outstanding and the Section 16 interest up to the filing date. Keep these figures matching your sheet. The Council and the buyer will go through them line by line.

6. Upload your documents

   The Udyam certificate, invoices, delivery challans or e-way bills, GRNs or completion certificates, the buyer's ledger, the demand notice with proof it went out, and any letter or email where the buyer admits the dues. Give every file a clear name. Not "scan001".

7. Check it and submit

   Read the whole application once more on screen. Look hard at the buyer's name and the totals. Then submit. You'll get an e-filing or application number, so save the acknowledgment as a PDF straight away.

8. Keep an eye on the Council's scrutiny

   The Council checks the application. It'll register it as a case, ask you to cure a defect, or send it back. Log in regularly and watch your email. A defect left sitting for weeks can get the application closed.

If the portal offers an online negotiation or settlement window before the Council picks up the case, take it seriously. Buyers who want to settle often do it right here, before lawyers on both sides have run up hours.

Papers to have ready before you file

How do you fill in the interest on the portal?

Enter interest up to the filing date. Then say, in your covering note or statement, that interest keeps running until payment. The Council's award can carry interest to the date the buyer actually pays. You don't need to guess a future date.

Keep principal and interest apart. Some suppliers type in one total with interest already folded in. That makes the Council's job harder and lets the buyer say the figure's inflated. Others claim a flat 18 or 24 percent because that's what's printed at the bottom of their invoice. Don't. Section 16 has its own rate, three times the bank rate compounded monthly, and it applies whatever you and the buyer agreed, so use it and attach the working. Our note on when you can claim interest at three times the bank rate explains when the right kicks in.

If the buyer rejected some goods in writing within 15 days, interest on that invoice runs from the day you cleared the objection, for example by sending replacements. Show that date. A sheet that's honest about rejections persuades far better than one that pretends they never happened.

Writing the short statement of facts

Most versions of the form give you a box to describe the dispute. Suppliers tend to leave it almost empty, or paste in a long, furious letter. Neither works. Picture the conciliator reading it ten minutes before your sitting, with three other files on the table. It should say who you are, what you supplied and under which purchase orders, when things were delivered and accepted, how much has been paid and how much hasn't, what you've done to recover it, and what the buyer said back.

Stick to facts and dates. Something like this: the claimant supplied moulded parts under purchase orders dated 4 January to 2 June 2026; deliveries were received at the buyer's Manesar plant, as the GRNs show; invoices totalling Rs 22.4 lakh are unpaid; a demand notice dated 1 September 2026 was received on 4 September; the buyer replied on 20 September pleading cash flow and didn't dispute quality. If the buyer has complained about something, mention it. Answer it in a line or two and point to the document that backs you.

Leave out the adjectives about the buyer. Leave out legal argument too. The Council has seen hundreds of these. What it wants to know, fast, is whether the dues are admitted, partly disputed or fully disputed. That decides how the sitting runs.

What will the buyer say back?

Buyers' replies follow a handful of patterns, and you can get ready for each one before filing. First comes the jurisdiction objection. You registered after the contract, you're a trader, you're a medium enterprise, or the contract has an arbitration clause. That last one stopped working after Mahakali Foods. The other three are taken seriously, so keep your Udyam certificate, your category history and a plain description of what your business makes or does.

Second is a quality or quantity dispute, often raised for the very first time after you've filed. Your answer is in the GRNs and inspection reports, and in the fact that nothing was rejected in writing within 15 days of delivery. In that case the Act treats the goods as accepted on the day they arrived. Third is set-off. The buyer claims a late-delivery penalty or knocks off amounts under debit notes you never agreed to. Keep the emails on each debit note together.

The fourth is plain delay. Requests for time. Adjournments. A new officer who's "just taken over the file". Councils handle this in their own ways. Turn up to every sitting, keep your figures updated, and get any offer the buyer makes written down at the sitting itself.

How filing changes with the kind of supplier you are

• You make and supply goods. Signed challans, e-way bills and GRNs are your best papers. Put in the delivery date for each invoice, since acceptance counts from there.
• You provide services. There's no GRN, so you'll show acceptance through sign-off emails, completion certificates, client-approved timesheets, or the fact that nobody objected within 15 days. Upload these against each invoice.
• You're a job worker. Show the buyer's material coming to you, your processing challans and the buyer receiving the finished goods. The Council should see that you're claiming the job charge, not the material.
• You're a contractor on a works contract. Whether composite works contracts are covered has been argued in several courts. Get advice on where things stand before filing a big claim, and keep running bills, measurement books and certificates handy.
• The buyer's holding back retention money. Retention released after a defect liability period has its own due date. Show it separately. Don't lump it in with the ordinary invoices.

Which Council gets your complaint?

The one where you, the supplier, are located. That's Section 18(4). Courts have said again and again that this holds even when the contract names courts in another city or another seat of arbitration, and that the Council route overrides a private arbitration clause (Mahakali Foods, 2022). A Delhi supplier files before the Delhi Council, which sits under the Delhi Government's Department of Industries. A unit in Noida or Ghaziabad goes to the Uttar Pradesh Council covering its district. A Gurugram or Faridabad unit goes to the Haryana Council for its area.

Got units in two states? Then the question is which unit made the supply and appears on the invoices and on your Udyam registration. The portal routes the application by your Udyam address, so the right unit had better be on record. Our note on which Council has jurisdiction deals with the trickier cases.

How long each stage takes, and what it'll cost you

What happens once you've filed?

When the Council registers the case, it sends notice to the buyer and asks for a reply. Then comes conciliation, run by the Council itself or by an institution offering alternative dispute resolution, under Sections 65 to 81 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. Think of conciliation as a guided negotiation. The conciliator hears both of you and may suggest terms. Nobody can force a result. If you agree, the settlement is recorded and has the status of an arbitral award. We cover this stage in how MSME conciliation works before arbitration.

If conciliation fails, the Council takes up arbitration itself or hands it to an institution. It gets formal now. You file a statement of claim. The buyer files a defence, maybe a counter claim. Documents are exchanged and the tribunal hears arguments. In Jharkhand Urja Vikas Nigam v. State of Rajasthan (2021), the Supreme Court struck down an order a Council had passed without holding proper arbitration after conciliation failed. This stage can't be skipped.

To track your case once it's moving, see how to check your Samadhaan case status and next date. For an honest idea of the whole timeline, read how long a Facilitation Council case really takes.

Mistakes that slow down or sink a Samadhaan complaint

• Filing against the wrong buyer. A trade name, a group company that never placed the order, or a branch with no legal identity of its own.
• Old phone numbers on Udyam. The OTP goes to a phone nobody carries any more, and the Council's notices sit unread.
• Mixing old contracts with new ones. Invoices under purchase orders from before your Udyam date invite a registration objection that can drag down the whole case.
• Copying the interest rate off your invoice footer. The Act sets its own rate. A percentage you've picked yourself makes the rest of your figures look shaky too.
• Uploads nobody can read. Phone photos of crumpled challans, files called scan001, documents with no dates on them.
• Pretending the buyer never complained. If they wrote to you about short supply or defects, deal with it in the claim. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
• Waiting too long. After Sonali Power Equipments (2025) you can still conciliate an old claim, but the arbitration stage is subject to the Limitation Act. Read about the time limit for an MSME delayed payment claim.

File it yourself, or get a lawyer?

For a clean claim, plenty of suppliers file on their own and it works fine. A recent registration, a handful of invoices, signed challans, and a buyer who just hasn't paid. The form was built for that. A lawyer starts to earn the fee when the buyer looks ready for a fight. Maybe your registration date is open to attack. Maybe the contract has an arbitration clause or an exclusive jurisdiction clause the buyer will lean on, or the claim is large, or there's a quality dispute, or the buyer is a public sector body that challenges every award as a matter of habit.

Many businesses take a middle path, and it works well. Prepare the sheet and the papers yourself. Then have an advocate read the draft application before you hit submit. When Advocate B.K. Singh looks over a draft like that, the first thing he checks is the buyer's legal name and GSTIN against the purchase orders. A mismatch there is the commonest reason a perfectly good claim gets stuck at scrutiny. Next, he checks that every invoice in the claim was raised after the registration date.

What if the buyer is a PSU, a government department, or in another state?

Same process. Government departments and public sector undertakings are buyers under the Act like anyone else, and the portal lets you mark them by type. They rarely disappear. They do file long replies and challenge awards, though, and internal approvals can hold up a settlement for months. Write to the officer who placed the order and to the finance wing. Keep copies of both. Our note on MSME claims against a government department or PSU covers the points peculiar to them.

If the buyer's in another state, your Council is still the one where you're located. The buyer gets called before your Council, usually online. If it comes to enforcing the award, that happens where the buyer's assets are. That might mean a court in its home state.

What to do this week

Check the contact details on your Udyam registration. Find the buyer's GSTIN and legal name. Build the invoice sheet, rejections and part payments included, and work out Section 16 interest. Send a demand notice with the sheet attached. To understand the body that'll hear you, read what the MSME Facilitation Council is and how it works. If you expect the buyer to object, look at the usual reasons MSME claims get rejected before you file.

Want your draft complaint and papers checked before filing, or updates when the MSME law or the portal changes? Get in touch with Advocate B.K. Singh's team through the contact page.