How to get support on Tally.ERP9 more promptly?

ApniTally readers have given some mind scraching response to Tally.ERP9 Post. While Sandeep has his apprehensions related to downgrading to Tally9 if he finds some trouble, for Mahen its not right time to upgrade to Tally.ERP9 as he finds some problems in excise and VAT and TDS. As you can not track back if you upgrade to Tally.ERP9, the solutions is what Mahen has done. As he has rightly sent the problems to Tally support , I would like to say that this is the right method get your problems solved as soon as possible.
As all Tally users are working on different kinds of accounting environments they get different kinds of problems. If your kind of work environment is having some sort of trouble them it should be reported to Tally. Two cases are possible, One there is an actual error as things cannot be done and second users must not be knowing how to do the particular task. In both the cases reporting the matter in full details to support@tallysolutions.com is going to provide you the much needed help.

Support Center

Tally has introduced an inbuilt mechanism to get the support in Tally.ERP9. It is called the Support Center. Until now you were getting help by pressing Alt+H now you can get support from Support Center by pressing Ctrl+H. Here press Alt +L and you would see the login screen it. Remember the email id which you have given while activating Tally.ERP9? Where you have recieved unlock Key for Tally! You have to enter the same email id and the password which you have recieved on the same email id. Remember you should be connected to internet before doing this thing as this would be an internet based activity.
If you dont remember the Tally.Net password then you need not to worry. Press F5 and you would get another email regrding password as it would be RESET. Check the mail copy the password by pressing Ctrl+c and paste in Your Tally.Net Pawword field by pressing Ctrl+Alt+V. Login with this new password.

Here press Alt+N or click new Issue to report new issue.
Select Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. in Send to field, give descriptive heading in Subject field and full description. Press Enter and the matter is reported to Tally!!! You would get the response very soon and get a ticket number related to issue reported by you. I don't think this can become easier then this.
You can keep track of all your issues and apply filters on them also to sort out the required one. If any one neds this simplicty then he has to upgrade to Tally.ERP9.
You should change the Suport password from the given by Tally to one which is easily can be remembered by you. How you can do this wold be explained in coming post

Tally to discontinue Tally Certified Professional (TCP) Exam

Tally is in the process to revamp its education system. To develop a better ecosystem around Tally product some new thinking is going on. Training of Tally and Tally Academy network is one of the vital link in development of this ecosystem. The Tally certification process was also one of the tools of that ecosystem. The certification process was started with an expectation to create a work force of certified people who would be ready for market which has a huge demand for trained account professional. The work force was created but it couldn't achieve the level it was planned for.
Tally Academies couldn't create the scene where anybody willing to be certified in Tally just walk in for test and walk out with certificate in hand within 90 minutes. The number of students enrolled in Academy and number of students who took TCP had a huge gap.
Now Tally has decided to scrap the examination process and something new is expected very soon. In this scenario all academies should consume all TCP cards available with them before 31st Jan, 2008. Any students willing to attend the TCP test or preparing for it should go for it before 31st Jan. If the Academies are not able to consume all the cards then they should be returned to company.

Understanding Tally's configuration file Tally.ini

If you have used single user then it may be the case that you have never bothered to edit this file or even tried to know where this file is and what it does. But If you have worked on a multi user Tally version then chances are that at one time or another some one has told you to go to Tally.ini file and do the required setting.
Tally's behavior is controlled by its .ini file. This file resides in the folder in which Tally's exe file is or you can say in the folder where tally is installed. Let understand why this file is necessary and how it can be helpful for us.

Purpose
This file is Tally's initialization file. It can be also referred as configuration and setting file of Tally. When ever Tally loads itself then it takes working environment from this file. All variables from this file are picked and then tally starts functioning accordingly. So this file is important for desired working of Tally software.

How to identify?
If you have multiple installations of tally then you would find multiple ini files. But which file is effective for which installation is identified only by the fact that where it is located. The easiest way is to just Right Click Tally icon then select properties and then click find target. You would land in the same folder where tally is installed. Here you would find many files which have name as Tally. Out of which you have to find a file with notepad icon with a yellow baidge on it.( Just as shown in photograph above)

Understanding commands
The first line of Tally.ini file is
TallyLicense = Connect
This shows tally how to get the license of Tally. If this is connect then while loading tally would look for license file. If this file is found then tally serial no would be shown otherwise education mode would be active. If we are at the node machine of a multi user tally then we should put double semi collons (;;) before this line so that tally doesn't look for license file. The second command line would take care of this information.

The second line is
TallyLicenseServer = server:port
This line shows where tally should look for license file. It is used in nodes to specify where is the license file. Server:port are replaced by machine name of the server or the ip address of the server and followed by the port on which tally license is running. Usually this is port 9000 in tally. So the effective line on nodes in multiuser Tally should be
TallyLicenseServer = 192.168.0.1:9000
where 192.168.0.1 is the ip address of server and 9000 is the port.

The next important line is
Data = C:\Tally9\Data
It shows where Tally should look for data files to load the companies. What ever the data path is automatically those companies would be shown. In case of multi user Tally it can be the shared folder of server,e.g. \\192.168.0.1\data where data is the tally data folder on server which has ip address 192.168.0.1

Next Line is about loading default company automatically. It is
Default Companies = Yes
Load = 10000

If default companies is yes then tally would automatically load the company which has number written in load variable. If default companies is put to No then no company is loaded by default and you have the option to select the company from the list from your desired location.
If default companies is set to yes then default company is loaded automatically. But in case the default company is corrupted then tally would try to load the default and throw you out by displaying the error message. You would never be able to open tally.

Next lines are related to tdl programs to be loaded. If you have customized your tally then you must be having some tdl files. the location of these files has to be provided here so that they can be loaded as the is started. These lines to do it are
User TDL = Yes
tdl=c:\tally9\SDFExportImport.tcp
First put the user tdl is to yes and then give the path of the tcp or txt file in next line.

These are all the important command line of Tally.ini. There are some more network friendly commands which are explained in my earlier post on Tally becomes network friendly.

Trouble shooting Tally Multi User: How to make it work on Network.

Many Tally users face difficulty in configuration of Tally over a network. Many ApniTally Readers have also faced this kind of Problems. I have discussed this thing in my earlier post also on How to configure Tally on Network. The configuration settings to be done are described in great deal here.

But still tally is educational on nodes and license is showing up on server then some trouble shooting is needed.

Reason of Trouble
If Tally license is showing at server and still nodes are at educational tally then two things are possible.

• Nodes are not able to connect with the server.
• License is not reaching the nodes.

One of the great tool to check if nodes and server are communicating properly is Ping command. Before giving ping command you have to assign a particular IP to each machine. Normally it starts with 192.168.0.1 for local Internal network for server. You can further assign next ips on nodes. They can be 192.168.0.2 and so on. If you have confusion on how the ip should be given then this article on how to assign an IP would help you.
Now after giving ip's you have to check if all computers are communicating with each other. It should be checked both ways. i.e. from server to nodes and from nodes to server. Give this command from each node would tell you if it is connected with server or not.

ping 192.168.0.1 -t

Here 192.168.0.1 is the ip of the server.

Request Time out as a result of this command means absence of proper connectivity. Check for cables and connectors etc.
Destination Host Unreachable means LAN card is disabled, check the LAN card status.
Reply from means proper connectivity.

If the first step is through then license is not reaching the nodes.

Take following steps.
Open internet explorer and write following command in browser

http://192.168.0.1:9000

It should show
Tally9 server running

If not then sit on server and reinstall license file.
Go to Start-> Programs-> Tally9->TallyLicense Server


If the Install button is not Highlighted then uninstall the license and Install it again.
It would install the license again and now the license file would be available on nodes. Make sure that if there is any firewall software on server then it should allow Tally software and keep it unblocked.
If still nodes are unable to get the license file then you should shut down all systems including server and first start the server and then all nodes.
It would definitely work, otherwise mail me your problem. We can do a CrossLoop session.

400+ Free Tally resumes to do accounting Job for you.

Ever since the starting of Tally Job service for Tally users across the glob, ApniTally has collected more then 400 resumes of people from different parts of India. These resumes have been submitted by people who are interested in doing job in Tally. The job resumes are from across the India and from almost all the states. That could have been possible because Apnitally has gained readership of Tally users in all the states of India.
If we take a look at the stats during last month (Nov) ApniTally got almost 17000+ unique visits from 83 different cities of India out of 19000+ visits across the glob.(See map overlay of Google analytic). That's why the resume of candidates for job are also from almost all states.

Find Tally People
So if you or your organisation is looking for Tally professionals to help you out in your accounting jobs, your hunt for Tally people ends here. The process of selecting a candidate is very simple. What you have to do is just check the candidates near you from the list which is categorised according to experience of candidate, functional area of Tally (e.g. sales, support, technical,accounting), work areas, type of work (e.g. full time, part time, freelancer), age and qualification. Then fill the form based upon your selection criteria and submit the form. The rest of the things would be done by ApniTally i.e. sending him the email at his/her address with your comments about your requirements. He would respond you. Later on you can call him at his contact mobile number also. Find the right candidate now.
The best part is that this service is that it is free and Apnitally is not charging a single penny for it.

How to print mailing labels through Tally

In the previous post I have described the free utility UDI Magic free edition. With the help of this tool data can be exported to Excel from Tally with the fields we need. Simple Select command of SQL styles has to be given and the data is shown in the way we want. One useful thing that I have tried is printing mailing lables of my sundry debtors and sundry creditors. As we know data can be filtered through this utility and it can be saved in excel file. Lets see how this can be achieved.

The prerequisites of Mailing Lables

In printing mailing labels through word few prerequisites has to be taken care of. The first one is that all the addresses of ledgers would be properly filled in Tally with full details like contact person, pincode, state and ofcorse full mailing address. If some thing is missing then it has to be completed before hand.
Second thing is that one should have full knowldge of the whole process of mail merge or printing mailing labels. I would provide a brief outline of the whole process but this has been explained here, Here and Here. These three sources would give you detailed idea about printing labels.
The main steps involved are :-
1. Selecting the main document.
2. Selecting the data source.
3. Merging the data with the main document to form labels.
Here second step of selecting the data source has to be done by selecting the excel file we would make now from Tally its self.
Start Tally, Open the company you want the labels to be printed. Be sure the ODBC Server is written on Tally panel. Now minimize the Tally and start UDI Magic. In Tally to Excel section give following command.

Select $LedgerContact, $MailingName, $_address1, $_address2, $_address3, $_address4, $_address5, $PinCode, $StateName from Ledger where $$IsChildOf:$$GroupSundryDebtors

Press the button View in Excel and this data extracted would be added to an excel file. Save this file and pick this file while performing the step 2 of Selecting the data source. Fix the size of the labels and print and fix the fields in a good order. All your sundry debtors would get a label. Following command can be given to print the lit of all Sundry creditors.

Select $LedgerContact, $MailingName, $_address1, $_address2, $_address3, $_address4, $_address5, $PinCode, $StateName from Ledger where $$IsChildOf:$$Creditors

Another free utility for Tally Users: UdiMagic

Tally reader Rajiv has sent me another free utility which can be used by all Tally users. This is called UDI Magic Free Edition. This utility is an excellent tool to bring data out of Tally. This can be in various forms and user can bring out what ever report they want.
Basically it can be termed as bridge program which can fetch data from Tally provided you know which data you want.The utility can be downloaded from this link.
After downloading you can unzip the files and install it on your c drive. You would get icon on desktop.

How to Use it

Although it is a restricted version then the original software called UDI Magic but still i was able to get lot of reports from this utility. Start Tally and Open the company from where you want to pull the data. Be sure that ODBC Server is running.
Double click the icon and the utility is started.
Now press next and choose the first option of Tally to Excell.
Press Next and you would get the are where you have to put the command for data. The utility accepts SQL like commands and the data is shown in the portion below. Try this example, In Tally you cann not get balances off all ledgers. Here you can see all ledgers with their closing balances. Put this command:

Select $Name, $ Closingbalance from ledger

You would get all ledger names with their closing balances. If you want only sundry debtors then modify the command as this:

Select $Name,$ClosingBalance From LEDGER where $$IsChildOf:$$GroupSundryDebtors

This would give you the list of all sundry debtors. This report can be taken from Tally itself by going to Display->Account Books->Group Summery->SundryDebtors
But If you want to call all sundry debtors then this utility would help as this command would provide their phone numbers also with the name and balances. Just insert $LedgerPhone. The command would be :
Select $Name,$LedgerPhone,$ClosingBalance From LEDGER where $$IsChildOf:$$GroupSundryDebtors

This report would be usefull and you would like to print the list of all person with their phone numbers. Just press the button view in excel in the right bottom and it would be transferred in excel and new sheet would be opened from where you can take the print out also.

Similarly following command would show the item report with name , base unit, closing value and closing balance.

Select $Name, $Baseunits, $ClosingBalance, $ClosingValue from StockItem

In case you get some error then perhanps there is a spelling mistake, correct it and try it again.
The readers can face problem in exploring the names of the tags which are used to display report. This problem will be explored and explained in next article.

As a closing note I want to add that if ApniTally readers have free utilities developed by them they can share it with other readers. If some payed products are there which can help the users of the Tally then ApniTally would be happy to review them. They can send the information regarding their products at my email at shailyji at gmail dot com.

Preparing for TCP: More Demo Tests available now

Enthusiastic Tally users are increasing and coming forward. ApniTally reader and Tally Academy at Pinjore, Haryana has developed some more test for preparation of Tally Certified Professional test. The questions are new and I hope number of questions would increase to help the aspiring TCP's. Prepared by Mr. Mukul Puri of Pinjore these tests have MS Word and MS Excel test also with TCP sections. One can attempt the test and see the scores.
Here are the Links for the tests.

Business Environment
Tally Financial Accounting
MS Word
MS Excel

Hope Mr. Mukul has enough bandwidth to support the rush of users attempting the test. His other exams which are coming soon are at this page. Congratulations to him for his job.

Demo Test for Tally Certified Professional (TCP)

Continuing my post on TCP, for those who are willing to become Tally Certified Professional (TCP) here is something interesting for them. As we know that to become TCP you have to go through online Test which is conducted by Tally India on Internet through its TallyAcademy network.
As the concept is new, most of the people don't know what is usually the content of the exam and what type of questions are asked in the exam.

More over one time exam charges are Rs. 1350/- plus taxes. So student can't take risk of attending the test without full preparation. To ease the matter i have designed demo tests which are not going to cost you a single penny and you can check your preparation for the final test.

Like original test this test has two sections but you have to attempt them separately.
Here are the Links for the tests.

Business Environment
Tally Financial Accounting

After attempting one section check your result and attempt the second section also to see the performance .
The beauty of this test is that every time you give these tests you would find separate set of questions. I am planning to increase the database after some time.
So Lets see how do you perform.

Update:

More questions have been added in both the tests to give users variety of questions each time they give test. Links are finishing a test has been corrected. Now after giving one test it would take you to test screen again from where you can choose your test. Some users have faced problem related to browser.
I have tested this test on Firefox 2.0 and it's lower versions it works fine. In IE it may give the error of not finding .xml file. But you can put this window aside by dragging it and attempt the questions. This happens sometimes due to slower connection speed.
These tests has been attempted more than 1000 times. Thanks for this response.

Tally Licensing : How to Actvite, Update and Surrender

Tally Licensing is one of the best thing for Tally and the most unique licensing system for stopping software piracy. In fact Tally is one of those software companies who had succeeded in stopping the piracy of software by implementing innovative licensing system.
Although it has proved a boon to company but is has been a bane for the users. This licensing system has raised difficulties for its users. According to Mr Bharat Goenka , Managing Director Tally India, life of pirated user is more easier the original user. All the hardship of licensing are faced by original user.
Many of Tally users have asked me about licensing related problem from time to time.These are related to activation of license, surrender of license and the updation of license. Lets understand the licensing process to solve the problems faced.

The Process of Licensing
After Installing Tally, you have to activate the license. Activation of license actually puts the signature of your computer into Tally's server. The signature, which contains information related to version of operating system, the hardware installed, the machine name etc is stored in Tally's server against your serial no. That serial no. is blocked against any other installation preventing duplication of your license. Internet is needed to send the signature file to Tally's server. In response to the entry a file is sent to the computer which is stored in the same folder where Tally is installed. This file is stored as tally9.lic in same folder where tally is installed.
There are two ways to activate the license. Online and Offline. Computer with direct internet connection can activate the license by online process. Those computers which has no direct internet have to follow offline process.