Moving from Tally to an ERP: what to migrate and how to check it

Keep Tally, or replace it?

Both work, and the choice decides what you migrate.

• Tally stays as the books. The ERP runs sales, stock and operations, and posts approved invoices into TallyPrime as vouchers. Your accountant keeps working in Tally. Very little accounting history moves; what moves is masters and open items. LS Technologies runs this way: approved invoices reach TallyPrime within 30 seconds, and every posted voucher is checked against Tally's own data.
• The ERP keeps the books. Ledgers, GST returns and TDS move into the ERP, and Tally becomes optional or goes. More moves, and the audit trail has to carry across. A boiler manufacturer Ahrom Labs built for runs this way, with GSTR-1, GSTR-3B and TDS from the operations system.

How each connection to Tally works, and why TallyPrime needs an agent on its own PC, is in four ways to connect a business system to TallyPrime.

What to move

How to check each import

Three rules, from moving five years of a manufacturer's sales history (see the note):

1. Check the file against itself first. A broken export had shifted 154 of 20,167 diary rows by a column or two; read naively, they would have lost their status. All 20,167 were recovered by checking each row's known last columns.
2. Hold, don't guess. A quotation that matched no customer, or more than one, went to a review list: 2,221 matched exactly one customer and came in; 303 waited for a person.
3. Tag every import. Each row carries the import it came from, so a batch found wrong later can be removed as one.

Cutover and the audit trail

A company keeping its books in software must have an audit trail for every financial year from 1 April 2023 (the date was substituted by the Companies (Accounts) Second Amendment Rules, 2022). Plan the cutover so the trail doesn't break: close a period in Tally, move balances as at that date, and start the ERP's trail from the first entry after. Keep Tally's data for the years before, read-only, for the auditor. See the audit-trail requirement.

A sequence that works

1. Freeze masters for a week; clean duplicates in Tally first.
2. Move masters, then check counts.
3. Pick a cutover date at a period end.
4. Move opening balances and outstanding bills as at that date; tie the trial balance.
5. Move stock and check quantity and value per item.
6. Run both systems for one cycle if Tally stays as the books; compare.
7. Move history last, read-only, and hold doubtful rows for a person.

See also the migration requirement and the Tally integration requirements.

Quoted from the official text (1) ›

“the figures, letters and words “1st day of April, 2023” shall be substituted”

Companies (Accounts) Second Amendment Rules, 2022