Outgrowing Tally without losing Tally
Tally is excellent at the books and GST. Manufacturing outgrows it when stock, production and buying need to run alongside the books instead of in spreadsheets around them. You have three honest options: stay, keep Tally for the books and add operations beside it, or move fully.
Works with SAP, Odoo & Tally · no rip-and-replace
- 01Stay on Tally
- 02Keep Tally for the books
- 03Move fully
Tally is a trademark of Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Likwid is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tally.
Tell us what you run on Tally today
We'll tell you honestly which path fits, including staying put. We reply within a day.
Should you move from Tally to an ERP?
Move when stock, production and purchasing have to run in the same place as your books, or when more people need live access than your Tally setup comfortably gives.
Don't move because a vendor tells you Tally is old. A manufacturer with a simple process, one site and an accountant who knows Tally can run on it for years. The question is whether the work around the books has outgrown it. If you are coming off spreadsheets instead, start with spreadsheet to ERP.
What Tally still does well
A fair comparison starts here. These come from Tally's manufacturing page and its guide for small manufacturers, so they are Tally's own claims, to be tested in a trial.
The books, GST and the audit trail
Your accountant knows it, your auditor knows it, and it does the core job it was built for very well. Nobody should move off it because a vendor says it is old.
More manufacturing than people assume
Tally's own pages describe multi-level bills of materials, manufacturing and stock journals, job costing, raw material requirements calculated from production orders, reorder levels, and stock tracked from raw material through work in progress to finished goods.
Job work and e-way bills
Material Out and Material In vouchers for goods sent to job workers, and an e-way bill "Job Work" sub-type so the movement isn't treated as a taxable sale.
Several godowns
Inventory tracked across multiple godowns, warehouses or shop floors, in the same place as the accounts.
Where manufacturing outgrows it
None of these is a defect in Tally. They are jobs it was never meant to do on its own. If two or more sound familiar, it is time to compare options. That is a rule of thumb, not a standard.
Does production planning live somewhere other than the system?
If the schedule is rebuilt in Excel every week, the books and the plan can never disagree, because they never meet.
Do stock and books tie out without a month-end scramble?
Days spent reconciling physical stock to the ledger is the clearest sign the process has outgrown the tool.
Does buying start from a forecast, or from someone noticing?
Tally records what was bought. It doesn't forecast demand or raise and chase purchase orders for you, so every purchase starts with a person.
Who needs live access at the same time?
Tally's licences split single-PC from multi-user, so who needs live access is a cost question as well as a design one.
Do customers ask for batch, serial or inspection records?
Check whether those records live in the system or in files kept beside it. Files beside the system are where audits get hard.
Does a manufacturing margin take days to assemble?
If cost per unit is built by hand after month-end, the production data never entered the books in a structured form.
Stay, keep Tally for the books, or move fully
Most pages push one path. These are the three, with what each one is right for and what it costs you.
Right when your accountant is happy with Tally but stock, production and buying have outgrown it
Tally stays the book of record for accounts and GST. A separate system takes stock, production, purchasing and planning, and hands the accounting entries across. The price is double entry or an integration you have to keep working, so settle who owns the master data first.
Keeping Tally: five decisions to settle
Running Tally beside an operations system works when these are decided up front, and becomes a reconciliation job when they aren't. Per Tally's documentation, Tally can run as a server and accept vouchers and masters pushed in from another system over HTTP as XML.
In Likwid's setup, financial data flows from Likwid into Tally, so your accounts team keeps its existing process. Bring your Tally setup to the first call and we'll scope exactly what posts, and when.
Who owns the master data?
Ledgers, parties and stock items need one master. Let the other system follow it, or you will be reconciling for as long as you run both.
What posts to Tally, and when?
Sales invoices, purchase bills, receipts, payments and production costing entries are the usual candidates. Operational detail stays in the operations system.
How do the two systems map?
Ledgers, stock items, units, tax rates and voucher types need a one-time mapping that both sides agree on.
What happens on edits and cancellations?
A voucher edited or cancelled on one side has to reach the other. Ask how it happens, not whether it does.
Which Tally version and licence do you run?
TallyPrime or Tally.ERP 9, single-user or multi-user. It changes how an outside system can connect.
The cutover, in order
This is the order that works for any ERP, ours included. The two systems overlap for exactly one month-end, and the old one is never deleted.
- 01
Clean the masters
Merge duplicate ledgers, parties and stock items, and retire the ones nobody uses. Migrating a mess only moves it.
- 02
Map the structure
Decide how Tally's ledgers, stock items, units, godowns, tax rates and voucher types map to the new system. Write it down once; every later step uses it.
- 03
Trial migration on a copy
Load a copy of your data into the new system and test it against reports you know. Fix the mapping, not the numbers.
- 04
Run one month-end in parallel
Enter the month in both systems. Compare the trial balance, closing stock and GST returns line by line until they agree.
- 05
Switch on a clean date
Cut over at a period boundary, with opening balances carried in. From that date, one system takes the entries.
- 06
Keep Tally read-only
Leave the old company file available and locked, for audit and for rollback if something unexpected turns up.
GST, e-way bills and job work: what to test
Indian compliance is where ERP demos get vague. Ask to see each of these on your own data, from any vendor, including us. The e-invoice portal is where an IRN actually comes from.
- 01An e-invoice with an IRN, generated from a real invoice of yours.
- 02An e-way bill for a sales dispatch, and a separate one for a job-work movement.
- 03Job work out and back: material sent to a job worker, received back, and the challan trail between the two.
- 04A cancellation or a credit note, and what it does to the e-invoice.
- 05TDS and TCS, where they apply to you.
- 06Your GST returns reconciling to the books at month-end.
When you should stay on Tally
Stay if production is simple, you run one site, your accountant is comfortable, and month-end closes without a scramble. In that case the gap, if there is one, is probably planning or purchasing, and the fix may be a layer beside Tally, not a new system.
What it costs, and how long it takes
Prices are published, not quoted: see the pricing page. The cutover has to include one month-end run in parallel, so plan the date around your financial calendar, and ask every vendor for the total first-year cost in writing.
Moving from Tally to ERP, answered
Keep reading
Bring your Tally setup to the first call
Tell us what you run on Tally today. We'll say honestly which path fits, including staying put.
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