03 Migration
Moving off Tally without losing the record
Our most common migration, and the one with the most folklore attached. What actually moves is smaller than people expect, and that is the point.
Step 1: Export and de-duplicate
Items, customers, suppliers and the chart of accounts cleaned in the export, before anything reaches the new system.
1 to 2 weeksStep 2: Strike the cutover date
Opening balances, open invoices and bills, and stock on hand with batch or serial detail, all taken as at one agreed date.
2 to 3 daysStep 3: Import and remap
Masters imported, the chart of accounts remapped to the new structure, and tax masters rebuilt rather than copied.
3 to 5 daysStep 4: Reconcile in writing
Trial balance, stock value, receivables and payables agreed between both systems as at the cutover date, and signed off before the old system stands down.
2 to 3 daysStep 5: Keep the old file readable
Closed history stays in Tally, readable for the eight financial year retention Section 128(5) of the Companies Act, 2013 requires.
Ongoing
We had run Tally for eleven years and assumed the migration would take all of it. It took the balances and the open items, and the old file is still there for anything older.
04 Statutory
GST configuration and the audit trail
Zoho Books is built for Indian tax and it still has to be configured for your business. These are the settings a self-service setup most often misses.
- Tax masters. Rates, HSN for goods, SAC for services, exempt and nil-rated flags, tested against twenty real documents from your last quarter.
- Place of supply. Intra-state against inter-state logic per customer and branch, which is the single most misconfigured setting in Indian Zoho accounts.
- E-invoicing. Mandatory above ₹5 crore aggregate annual turnover, with reporting to the Invoice Registration Portal within 30 days of the document date at ₹10 crore and above.
- Audit trail. The proviso to Rule 3(1) of the Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014, administered by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, has required a non-disableable edit log since 1 April 2023. We verify the behaviour on your deployment and document the check.
05 Reference
Terms used on this page
- Zoho One
- The bundled licence covering the suite per employee, usually cheaper past three or four apps per user.
- Zoho Creator
- The low-code platform inside the same account, used for job cards, checklists, field forms and approvals.
- Cutover date
- The date at which balances and open items are struck and the new system becomes the book of account.
- Place of supply
- The rule deciding whether a supply is intra-state or inter-state, and therefore which tax applies.
- Invoice Reference Number
- Written IRN: the identifier returned by the Invoice Registration Portal when an e-invoice is reported.
- Audit trail
- A non-erasable log of each transaction and each later change with its date. Required of company accounting software since 1 April 2023, and verified on your ERP deployment rather than assumed.
- Data Protection Board of India
- The adjudicating body under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The Schedule to that Act sets fixed rupee ceilings rather than a share of turnover: up to ₹250 crore for failing to take reasonable security safeguards against a personal data breach, up to ₹200 crore for failing to notify the Board and the people affected, and up to ₹50 crore for a breach of any other provision. That is why consent, retention and access control are build decisions here rather than paperwork.
06 Questions
Zoho implementation in Bathinda: FAQs
Next step
Tell us your headcount and what you run today.
You get an app list, the Zoho One against individual apps arithmetic on your real numbers, a migration plan and a fixed quote. Usually within one working day.
Read by Dhanush Prabha, our CTO, not a form queue. Reply usually within one working day, in your time zone.
Nebin Binoy 
