Introduction
Indubitably despite the presence of so many other accounting packages available in our market, Tally remains the undisputed king of financial accounting package available in all SAARC countries and all over the world. It has been one of the favorite subjects of the rah-rah school of accounts in the last few years. Although Tally cannot change your personal life it can handle practically any kind of transaction you would need, whatever your business. In this chapter, we take a close look at, what exactly Tally is and dig into the reasons which have made this software so modish.
In the simplest possible terms, Tally is a financial accounting package (with a difference) and in technical lingo, it is a true Enterprise Information System (eis). You will understand this concept as you read the book. Unlike other packages Tally doesn't involve any coding, thereby removing all dreadful sounding ho-hum terms related to programming as well as additional layers of information between your accounts and you. In order to use Tally, you neither need to learn new accounting methods nor should change your existing style of handling accounts. The software team of Tally has made all efforts to retain the flexibility of your traditional practice of manual accounting. The information can be fed as well as retrieved at random and all human errors can be corrected. Accounts can be classified in any desired manner and all outstanding can be tracked. Many more facilities ties like this, give you a near duplicate of your manual system of accounting at enormous speed.
A transaction in accounting terminology means the transfer of money or money's worth from one party to another, for example, the sale of goods, purchase of furniture, etc, are examples of transactions. Fundamentally there are two systems of transaction: pre-transaction and post-transaction. Let us explore them in detail, assume that you have to make payment to a party, in a pre-transaction system, this is done by first creating a voucher, which is signed by the payee, and then the transaction is completed by actually making the payment. These pre-transaction systems provided preprinted vouchers, cheques, and involve the creation of internal entries in case of completed transactions. The post-transaction system follows the traditional practice of entering a voucher or a cash bill into a cash book after the payment has been made, Tally is a post-transaction system. It follows the traditional methods of accounting, that is, the payment is first made on the basis of existing accounting methods (i.e., against a voucher or cash bill) and that information is fed into the Tally. The simple fact that your existing system of accounting remains untouched by Tally is a big reason behind the success of this package.