The usual way, and where the hours go
Most firms export a trial balance from Tally, paste it into a workbook, then map each ledger to a line of the Balance Sheet or Profit and Loss by hand. Every year the same ledgers are mapped again, previous-year figures are typed in from last year's file, and differences are chased one by one. On a client with hundreds of ledgers, that is most of a day before any real review begins.
What Finalise does instead
- Reads the company from TallyPrime, current and previous year, while it is open in Tally. Nothing is exported by hand.
- Proves every ledger against Tally: opening balance plus entries must equal Tally's own closing balance.
- Maps every ledger to its Schedule III line automatically, using built-in rules, your firm's earlier decisions and a shared dictionary of ledger names.
- Writes the workbook: Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss and the notes, both years side by side, with live Excel formulas you can follow and check.
Which format?
The workbook follows the format for non-corporate entities in ICAI's guidance: proprietorships, partnership firms, trusts and similar entities. Partners' capital, current accounts and remuneration are laid out the way the format expects; a proprietor's capital account is shown without a partners' section. A company or LLP gets the same layout with a clear note, because a dedicated Division I company layout and an LLP layout are not part of this version.
How the mapping works
Mapping is a property of the ledger, so it is decided once and reused. For each ledger Finalise looks, in order, at:
- the decisions your firm has already made for that ledger name,
- its Tally group and built-in accounting rules (for example, a bank overdraft goes to short-term borrowings, debtors to trade receivables),
- a shared dictionary of common Indian ledger names,
- and, for clear ordinary expense names only, AI help.
Ambiguous items, such as an advance to a person that could be a loan or a deposit, are marked Worth a look instead of guessed silently. Whatever you change in Mapping is saved for the firm and wins over the automatic placement every time.
Presentation that follows the year
Some choices belong to the year, not the ledger. A bank account that is in credit one year and overdrawn the next is shown as a borrowing in the year it is overdrawn and as cash and bank in the other. Stock is split into its categories from the Tally data. Each year keeps its own source, stock and classifications.
Checks before you file
- The workbook's own totals are checked after it is written, so a figure can't be counted twice.
- Anything assumed is listed on a Review notes sheet, with what to change if you disagree.
- If a figure itself would be wrong, the export stops and says why in plain words, instead of producing a file that only looks right.