Tally Configuration : Mold Tally according to your Accounts.

One of my reader and now a user of Tally software approached me for software package for his traveling agency. He has many cars and many drivers which he wanted to manage. He was looking for a software which could take into account of his every vehicle, every trip , every car’s maintenance and every driver and his profitability. He was surprised when i told him to develop whole software in two days. He was even more surprised when i told him that every thing is already done in tally. The two days i am taking is to give him demonstration by changing the configuration of tally and entering his sample data.

Such is the beauty of the software. You can adjust it according to your business needs. It doesn’t matter if your in service industry or in manufacturing industry or in trading business, Tally fits to all.
Lets see how it can be done. For this all you need is a bird’s eye view of features and configuration options of Tally and little bit of your imagination about where you can apply them. A word of precaution here. While configuring tally, only those options should be activated which are needed and all other options should be put to No. The data entry becomes more and more complex with each option put to yes both in F11 Features or F12 Configuration.

While talking about these options the F11 Features are the uniques for each company you create where as F12 Configuration are same for all companies you work on at a time.

F11 :Features
Lets talk about them first. If your business want to give invoices to your costumers then changing feature of Allow Invoicing to yes would enable you to print invoice in tally, for which you can take print outs automatically or on command. Whereas if you don’t want to do it then simply use tally to punch in your accounting transactions in it.
Same way activating feature of Integrating accounts with Inventory would enable you to integrate your inventory in your accounts, whereas putting it to No would not mix inventory value with accounts.
Creative use of cost centers and cost categories can give you solutions to many problems which you would leave otherwise. It adds another dimension to how you see your reports under different heads. I keep track of my different business activities viz tally training and Tally software selling and customization by putting them under separate cost centers.
Same way in inventory you can manage different products and group them in different heads and stock categories. You can keep track of your various job works outsourced by making them as different godowns. Put Maintain Multiple Godowns to yes and use addresses for godown in F12 configuration to Yes.
In statutory features also only those which apply to you should be put to yes and their details should be entered correctly. All other features should be put to No.

F12 : Configuration
Configuration screens are different for different each type of activity. You can configure master creation by changing options related to advance entries of item, ledger, vouchers etc.
You can also do the configuration for printing, connectivity, shopping etc or some general configuration. Pressing F12 at any data entry screen would show you the configuration screen of the data entry. e.g. if you press F12 at voucher entry screen then configuration related to entering vouchers would be shown.
By putting single entry mode to yes you can enter faster data in Tally and that also without worrying about whom to Dr. and whom to Cr. For those who are new to accounting this feature is of great help. While entering payment and receipts etc. you need not to worry whom to debit or whom to credit
If you want to put address contact person details of your debtor and creditors then you can select advance entries in masters option to yes in Account/Inventory Info option of Configuration. I use this options to keep track of all my student’s address, father’s name address and phone no. etc.
You can see all configurations by pressing F12 at Gateway of Tally Menu and can change according to your requirement.