Tally is good at accounts. The books are correct. The GST returns go on time. Your CA
knows every ledger.
But a company is more than accounts. Stock, production, purchase, sales, payroll. When
these run outside Tally, the work becomes manual. Stock is in Excel. Production is
planned on WhatsApp. Three units mean three company files.
An ERP brings all of this into one system. Here are five signs that it is time. Then,
how the move goes, step by step.
1. You do not know your stock without counting
The stock figure in the file is what someone typed last. To know the real stock, you
call the store. Every purchase order depends on that call. In an ERP,
stock moves with the
documents. Receipt, issue, transfer, return. Every movement has a record. So the
stock figure is always current.
2. Production is planned in a chat group
Tally can hold a bill of material. It does not plan production. Which order to start
first? What material is needed, and by which date? Which machine is free? Today this is
in the production manager’s head. An ERP has an
MRP run. It takes the open sales
orders, reads the bills of material, and gives a list: what to buy, what to make, and by
when.
3. Three units, three company files
Each company in Tally is a separate file. Three units mean three sets of books. Stock
sent from one unit to another is a sale in one file and a purchase in the other.
Someone enters it twice. The group total is made in Excel.
In an ERP, all units are in one system. A transfer between units is one document. The
tax on it is decided on that document. The group total is a report.
(Moving
stock between your own units is still a tax event. One document handles it.)
4. Attendance, leave and payroll are in three places
Tally has payroll. Attendance comes from a biometric machine as a file. Leave is on paper
or in another tool. Every month, someone matches the three by hand. In an ERP,
attendance,
leave and payroll are one record. The payslip is made from the punches. EPF, ESI and
professional tax come out of the same run.
5. You do not know what the last job cost
So the next quotation is last year’s rate plus a percentage. This is the most important
sign, because it decides your margin. Accounts show the total. They do not show the cost
of one job. The cost figures slowly go wrong, and nobody sees it
(four
ways costing drifts). An ERP costs each work order: material used, operations done,
job
work charges, and scrap.
What does not change
The accounts must still be correct. Your CA and your auditor must still be happy. Check
this first in any ERP. The e-Invoice with IRN and the e-Way bill should come from the
invoice itself. CGST, SGST and IGST should follow the place of supply automatically.
Your CA still files the returns, from figures that match the invoices.
How the move goes
Choose a clean date
The best date is 1 April. A new financial year starts. The opening balances are the
audited closing balances. If that is far away, take the first day of a quarter, after
the returns for the last quarter are filed. Do not start in the middle of a month.
Move the masters, not the old vouchers
Move these: chart of accounts, parties with GSTIN and PAN, stock items with HSN codes
and units, opening balances, open invoices and open purchase orders. Do not move ten
years of vouchers. Keep Tally installed for reading old data. An old invoice from 2019
can be opened there any time.
This is also a good time to clean the masters. One customer with three spellings. Stock
items not used since 2021. A ledger called “Misc”. Leave them behind.
Start with one unit
Start with the unit where stock is the biggest problem. When it runs well for a month,
the next unit follows. One unit at a time keeps the move calm.
Run one month in both systems
For the first month, enter every transaction in both. At month-end, compare the two
trial balances. When they match, the move is done.
Who does what
One person owns the masters and the date. Your CA checks the opening balances. From the
store, the plant and the office, one person each who knows the real daily work.
How long
For one unit with clean masters, a few weeks. For several units, longer. Cleaning the
masters is the biggest part of the work, so start it early.
What it costs
Onfinity costs ₹1,999 per user per month for the people who work in the system.
Payroll and employee self-service cost ₹70 per employee per month. Pluto, the open
source edition, is free to
download and runs on your own server. Nova, the edition for several plants, is
priced on request. What each
edition costs is on one page, with what is not included.
Bring one month of your own data. The purchase register, the stock statement, one
payslip. See how the same month
looks in Onfinity.