Business forms a major source of employment in India through both organized and unorganized setups. Also business seems attractive to several individuals as it imparts multiple flexibilities to owners. Owners have complete independence relating to strategies implemented and adopted for successful running of the company. Also, business involves recruitment of multiple personnel for product/service development which promotes entrepreneurship and is beneficial for the society.

With progress in time, business and its ventures multiply and the revenue incurred increases manifold. It becomes utmost necessary to manage the company’s financials on an annual basis, monitor cost and revenue, as well as filing taxes regularly to comply with the Indian government’s regulations. Tally is by far the oldest and one of the most popular software solutions in accounting domain for Small and Medium Business (SMB) firms.

Tally is primarily a technology and innovation driven company which provides simple e-solutions for business and tax consultants and takes care of the financials. It is a complete Enterprise Resource Planning system with excellent accounting features. The softwares launched by Tally are versatile, user-friendly and are updated at regular intervals to keep in pace with changing technology and amendments in government regulations. A major feature recently introduced by Tally is to address all GST (Goods and Sales Tax) related issues for business concerns in India. GST is the largest tax reform introduced in the Indian financial scenario till date. However filing GST for all transactions requires the management of an accounting system very stringently, which is often missing in smaller business setups. While organizations exceeding a total revenue of 20 Crores Rupees are needed to register for GST, maintaining the accounting for such smaller firms becomes a challenge. According to the rules of GST levied on 18th July 2017, taxes have been imposed on procurement of commodities and services. As the saying goes, minimum tax is imposed on goods of essential needs with the rate progressively increasing for highly luxury items. Certain commodities of day-to-day use like fruits and vegetables for consumption, dairy products, handloom, and stationery items are classified under the GST exemption scheme whereas, items like frozen food, packaged dry fruits, branded garments and cameras have been levied at 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% GST rates respectively. This is where the complexities of managing and reporting the financials and accounting can be made simpler by adopting enterprise systems like Tally tailored specifically to these needs.

The latest product, Tally.ERP 9 Release 6, is embellished with capabilities for prompt and simplified GST return filing, assisting business owners and tax consultants in an effort to minimize rejections post submission of GST returns in the GSTN portal. This service generates GST-compatible invoices and has the provision to detect and correct maximum errors possible, to file an error-free GST return online in no time. Tally’s fresh introduction, the “Marked Voucher” feature, facilitates the business owner to constantly update his tax consultant with latest/last minute transactions which can be constantly tracked in the GST return by simply sharing a list of modified invoices. Tally has largely contributed to render GST return filing simple and hassle-free for the business community and auditors. Also additional attractive features are available such as generation of GSTR-1 and GSTR-2 in JSON format and direct upload facility to the GSTN portal whereas, GSTR-3B has to be downloaded separately in a word document prior to filing in the portal.

Hence, Tally’s GST software is capable of handling multi-dimensional features such as GST billing, ranging from simple to complicated bills with multi-item transaction and multi-tax rates. The software can also address advance receipt based needs, reverse charge scenarios, branch transfers, bill of supply, export invoices, input tax credit and other adjustments. Needless to say, for SMBs this becomes a must have software to ensure compliance with the accounting and taxation related needs post GST implementation.

By Chakraborty

Dr Chakrabarty is the Chief Innovation Officer of IntuiComp TeraScience. Earlier she was Assistant Professor of Delhi University, a QS ranked university in India. Before that she has held research positions in IIT Mumbai, IIT Chennai and IISc Bangalore. She holds 2 patents and over 20 research publications in her name which are highly cited. Her area of research is in smart technologies, integrated devices and communications. She also has a penchant for blogging and is an editor of Business Fundas.