Tally.

ERP 9

Product Notes
September 22, 2008

Tally.ERP 9: Product Notes

©Tally Solutions Pvt Ltd
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Tally Solutions Pvt.
Ltd., (‘Tally’ in short) on the topics discussed as of the date of publication. Because Tally must
respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the
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© 2008 Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tally, Tally 9, Tally9, Tally.ERP, Tally.ERP 9, Shoper, Shoper 9, Shoper POS, Shoper HO,
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 Table of Contents

Overview & Historical Context...................................................................... 5

Introducing Tally.ERP 9................................................................................ 6
The ‘components’ ....................................................................................... 6
The Calendar ............................................................................................. 6
Enhanced Ecosystem Support ....................................................................... 6
Tally Service Partners .............................................................................. 6
Tally Services Network.......................................................................... 6
A world of ready-to-use extensions ............................................................ 6
Integration & Implementation: TallyIntegrators ........................................... 7
Tally Integrators Network ...................................................................... 7
Appendix: Nomenclature of Products ............................................................. 8
Release Nomenclature.............................................................................. 8
Editions Nomenclature ............................................................................. 8
Introducing Tally.NET .................................................................................. 9
License and Configuration Management ......................................................... 9
Single Site Administration........................................................................10
Multi Site Administration..........................................................................10
Remote Access Services .............................................................................10
Rewind into Authentication & Authorisation ................................................10
Identity, Authentication, Authorisation elements of Tally.NET........................11
Identity Services .................................................................................11
Authentication Services........................................................................11
Authorisation ......................................................................................11
Local and Remote User Services ...............................................................12
Local Data – Tally.NET User ..................................................................12
Remote Data – using Tally.ERP Licensed Application.................................12
Remote Data – using Tally.ERP Educational Application.............................13
Remote User – Product Capability ..........................................................13
Security and Confidentiality of Data..............................................................13
Tally.ERP 9 Release 3 (Oct-Dec 2008)........................................................ 15
Technology & Capability Enhancements.........................................................15
Performance and Volume Handling............................................................15
Remote Access Capabilities ......................................................................15
Using SMS .........................................................................................15
Support Centre ......................................................................................15
KnowledgeBase Access............................................................................15
Configuration Management ......................................................................16
Add-on’s Management.............................................................................16
TDL Enhancements .................................................................................16
Functional Enhancements ...........................................................................16
Cash Accounting.....................................................................................16
Enhanced Statutory Capabilities................................................................16
Special Features of the Auditors’ Edition ....................................................16
Tally.ERP 9 Release 4 (Apr-Sep 2009)........................................................ 18
Technology & Capability Enhancements.........................................................18
Multi-session, Multi-threaded ...................................................................18
Multi-session ......................................................................................18
Multi-threaded ....................................................................................18
Multi Stack Architecture for Scale-up & Scale-down Deployments ..................18
High Transaction Capacity with Low Latency & Management .........................19
Payment Engine for Debit & Credit Cards ...................................................19
Functional Enhancements ...........................................................................19
Online Banking and Reconciliation.............................................................19

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 Point-of-Sale for most Retail Environments ................................................20
Income Tax ...........................................................................................20
Exim Documentation...............................................................................20
Job Costing............................................................................................20
Fixed Assets ..........................................................................................20
Tally.ERP 9 Release 5 (Jan-Apr 2010) ........................................................ 21
Technology & Capability Enhancements.........................................................21
Unlimited Volume Handling ......................................................................21
High Availability & Continuity System ........................................................21
High Extendibility & Integrate-ability .........................................................21
Collaborative Commerce Engine using Tally.NET .........................................22
Rule Based Access/Process/Workflow Configurations....................................22
Functional Enhancements ...........................................................................23
Publish-to-sell combining Payment Engine and Tally.NET..............................23
Field Force Automation............................................................................23
Complex BoM and Materials Requirement Calculations .................................23
In Conclusion ............................................................................................. 24

Tally.ERP 9: Product Notes

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Overview & Historical Context
Worldwide, the micro and small enterprises (MSEs) have been accepted as the engine of
economic growth and for promoting equitable development. The MSEs constitute over
90% of total enterprises in most of the economies and are credited with generating the
highest rates of employment growth and account for a major share of industrial
production and exports. In India too, the MSEs play a pivotal role in the overall industrial
economy of the country. It is estimated that in terms of value, the sector accounts for
about 39% of the manufacturing output and around 33% of the total export of the
country. - Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India,
http://www.msme.gov.in

Tally Solutions has been in the business of providing complete business solutions from
over 20 years to MSME businesses in emerging markets. We have over 3 million users in
over 100 countries and continue to be the preferred IT solution for many hundreds of
thousands of businesses every year.

Tally 9 – its flagship product (which started as a simple bookkeeping system 20 years
ago), is today a comprehensive, integrated solution – covering several business aspects
of an enterprise. These include, Accounting, Finance Management, Receivables /
Payables, Inventory Accounting, Inventory Management, BoM based manufacturing
inventory, multi-location / multi-currency / multi-unit handling, Budgets and Controls,
Cost and Profit Centres, Job Costing, POS, Group Company consolidations, Statutory
Taxes (Excise, VAT, CST, TDS, TCS, FBT, etc), Payroll Accounting, and other major and
minor capabilities. For all practical purposes, it has served as an ERP for small
enterprises since the introduction of Tally 5.0 almost 12 years ago.

Yet, we had resisted labeling it as an ERP for a very simple reason. We have always
believed that to ‘qualify’ for such an august label, the system should inherently support
the ability to operate the enterprise from anywhere. That is, the owner(s), or any other
authorised person, should be able to work on their information – even without direct
physical access to the systems. Effectively, we wanted the capability to extend Tally
beyond the physical boundary of the installation. With the availability of Remote Access
and Remote Authentication, we are now satisfied that it is time to label the product as
Tally.ERP.

Beginning with Tally.ERP 9 Release 3, we will progressively deliver the capabilities

required even by Medium & Large corporations. These too are detailed below.

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Introducing Tally.ERP 9
The ‘components’
Tally.ERP 9 consists of the product (with releases and editions), a deep and wide
partner ecosystem, a set of services that are collectively called Tally.NET (detailed later)
and an ever growing product capabilities & functionality.

The Calendar
Release 3 Release 4 Release 5
Family Family Family
Tally.ERP Edition
Jul to Dec Apr to Sep Jan to Jun
08 09 10
Yes
Silver
(First Beta Yes Yes
(Single User)
released)
Gold
Yes Yes Yes
(Up to 10 Users)
Diamond
No Yes Yes
(100's of Users)
Platinum
No Yes Yes
(1000's of Users)

Enhanced Ecosystem Support

Recognizing the value that our partners can bring to a growing and distributed business,
we are enhancing the Tally partner ecosystem for an unmatched experience. Our many
partners offer sales, product support, integration, extension and training services.

Tally Service Partners

Our large services partnership base is further enabled to support all your product service
needs – from implementation to training. This is accomplished by ensuring that our
partners you have the closest access to are enabled to provide commonly needed
services – from installation and training to support and licensing. We hope that over
time you will be able to contact your chosen partner for your entire product & support
related needs.

Tally Services Network

These service partners will also be part of a services network – and will work co-
operatively to provide broad based services even for distributed operations.

A world of ready-to-use extensions

Built ground up to support extendibility, Tally.ERP 9 comes with an execution Kernel, an
interpreter and a development language TDL (Tally Definition Language). This domain
specific language is also used to develop the Tally.ERP 9 product as you see it (the
source code is also available to our development partners).

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There is often a business need for small and large product extensions to manage
specific requirements. Over the last few years, our partners and Independent Software
Vendors (ISV’s) have built, and continue to build, many exciting extensions.

The Tally Extender (TE) program is an initiative from us to bring closer the developers of
these extensions and you to a ‘marketplace’ where you can explore, evaluate and buy
appropriate extensions that you need. This will often mean that the need to go in for
longer custom development is avoided and you get these at a lower cost as well.

The marketplace will provide the capability for you to:

• Search for specific extensions

• Download and evaluate
• Pay and buy
• Obtain support
• Download updates

… all these from within Tally as well as on the

web.

The processes in Tally.ERP 9 make the entire experience of activating and licensing
transparent – such that the typical issues of product maintenance and multiple purchase
points disappear.

Integration & Implementation: TallyIntegrators

Our TallyIntegrator partners are outfits who have the expertise to deliver solutions on a
larger scale – typically involving large-scale deployments, integration, programming and
customization services and project
management.

With the establishment of a dedicated team at

Tally, we now lay additional emphasis to work
closely with these technology partners and IT
providers to bring you:
• Integration with legacy and best-of-
breed vertical solutions
• ERP-style engagements for total
solutions, example Retail
• “Secondary Sales” solutions for
leveraging information from your
channel
• Migration from legacy systems
• Extensions for very specific needs, like web interfaces
• Enterprise-wide rollouts across the globe

Tally Integrators Network

Our integration partners will be enabled to provide global support to your geographically
distributed enterprise via an inter-partner network. You can be assured that your Tally
Partner will be able to offer support anywhere, all this while leveraging the many
strengths of locally available partners.

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Appendix: Nomenclature of Products
Release Nomenclature
The first release of the Tally.ERP family will be labeled Tally.ERP 9 Release 3. Over the
next few months, with increasing capability the releases will be 3.1, 3.2 and so on. The
next major release will be Tally.ERP 9 Release 4 and then Release 5…. These releases
(3,4 & 5) are detailed in this document.

Editions Nomenclature
Tally.ERP 9 will be available in 4 editions – Silver, Gold, Diamond and Platinum. These
editions differ in only one significant aspect: scalability. The Silver Edition is for one
user, Gold will support up to 10 concurrent users, Diamond will support a few hundred
users and Platinum will support thousands of users simultaneously. No functional
differences are planned for these editions, making it painless and easy for businesses to
scale without any change in capability or compatibility.

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Introducing Tally.NET
The Internet is now widely available, reliable and affordable to businesses and people
on the move. Tally believes that this allows us
to now offer a set of increasingly powerful
services and capabilities, under the umbrella
of Tally.NET, to get your business ‘connected’
and to leverage the many advantages of the
Internet.

Some of these services are:

1. Remote access services
2. Field force automation
3. Online banking and reconciliation
4. Collaborative e-commerce
5. Data Synchronisation

While some of these services will require you to have a current paid-up subscription to
Tally.NET services, several services will also be available without the need for the
subscription:
1. Account management – single and multi site
2. Access Tally via SMS from mobile
3. Online exams (to help recruitment)
4. Online help and support, with central visibility for your enterprise
5. Remote authentication

License and Configuration Management

Software license management is often a real pain – and negatively impacts an
organizations business performance as it takes away important time and mind share of
senior executives. Tally has always recognized the importance of this, and even today
the unlimited Gold multi-user license stands out as the most simple way to license
‘management’ – there is no complexity to calculate the number of ‘named’ users,
‘concurrent’ users, manage growth and so on.

With geographically distributed enterprises, we will simplify this area even more. This is
principally led with the introduction of ‘Accounts’ and ‘Sites’.

Your organization is setup as an Account – and by default has one ‘Site’. Licenses that
you acquire can be configured centrally across your sites at will. Coupled with volume
price benefits, this will enable you to deploy your capital in the most efficient manner
without the need to lock these up at sites where licenses lie unused.

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Single Site Administration
Every deployment of Tally.ERP 9 is a ‘site’. Consequently every account will have at least
one site. As an example, were you to have one Silver license – even one on rental – you
will have one site in your account. The Account Administrator can now:
• Surrender the license in case system errors cause license failure (enabling
subsequent reactivation)
• Acquire extensions (from the TE marketplace), which are attached to this license
• Look at support issues centrally, track resolution status

Multi Site Administration

With multiple sites additional advantages open up. You could even purchase, say, a 6-
site Gold license and deploy this one-by-one during implementation. Each site can have
its own site administrator who has the same administrator rights as a single-site
administrator has. In addition, the account administrator can:
• Manage sites centrally
• Allocate/re-allocate module extensions (from the TE marketplace)
• Take advantage of volume pricing
• Merge licenses in case of mergers and acquisition
• Split licenses in case of de-mergers
• Centrally manage Tally.NET identities

Remote Access Services

Rewind into Authentication & Authorisation
These two are frequently confused and loosely interchanged in conversations. There is
however a world of difference – and you may skip to the next section if you do not need
to review these terms.

The basic principles of security are Identity, Authentication & Authorisation.

Identity – who you say you are

Authentication – you prove your Identity
Authorisation – you are permitted to ‘something’ based on your confirmed identity

Using a
daily example – ATM cash withdrawal:
¾ You insert your ATM card – Identity (you get the message: Welcome xxxx)
¾ You enter your ATM pin – Authentication (you get access to operations)
¾ You check your balance – Authorisation (you get a printout)
¾ You attempt to withdraw Rs. 50,000 – Not Authorised (this is blocked as you
have exceeded your daily limit)
¾ You want to deposit cash – This ATM may not support the feature of cash
deposit even though you are authorised to deposit cash at ATMs. This behavior
is not part of ‘security’ – and is an example of ‘capability’, something that we
will encounter later on in this document.

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Identity, Authentication, Authorisation elements of Tally.NET
In the good old days, you would visit your home branch of your bank to withdraw cash.
A bank operator would check your signature physically in the records, authenticate you,
and authorise the teller to pay cash to you. There was no way that you could visit any
branch in India and withdraw cash. Today you can – and this is because your identity
and authentication information (passwords, ATM pins etc) are stored in a central
location that all branches have access to.

One of the many capabilities brought to you by Tally.NET (more on Tally.NET later), is
this ‘central location’ to store identities and provide authentication services.

Identity Services
A local user (a ‘regular’ user identity) is one which is data specific – as he is tied to the
company in which this identity is created. If access is required to another company data,
another local user will need to be created in that company as well. The identities so
created are embedded with the company data itself – implying that these local users are
‘data specific’ – hard coded, so to speak.

A Tally.NET user is ‘disconnected’ from specific data – created and residing on the
Tally.NET servers. Specific companies, yours or any other company that uses the
Tally.NET services can grant this user access to data – and specify what access is
allowed.

An organisation using, say, Tally.ERP 9 Gold can create up to 10 such users – from
within Tally.ERP 9. This organization can now authorise these users to access specific
companies. Further permissions on what he can or cannot operate on can be set as user
permissions in that company. Authorisation can also be given to third party Tally.NET
identities, say of your Auditor, or those of your Head Office.

Authentication Services
As these identities are maintained centrally, they are guaranteed to be unique for all
users of Tally.NET. These users can also be granted access to any company (in any
license on Tally.ERP 9) across the world and which is connected to Tally.NET – whether
these companies are created by you or by any business associate. Needless to say, such
access is only possible if that associate expressly authorises this for specific Tally.NET
identities.

When such a user attempts to log in to a particular company, the authentication of his
identity is performed via the internet – remotely.

Authorisation
Authorisation is NOT performed by Tally.NET. This is under your control: you decide if
someone has access, you decide what he has access to.

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Local and Remote User Services
Local Data – Tally.NET User
A Tally.NET user has several advantages even if data access is local – meaning the data
is available at his physical location. The user authentication will be provided by Tally.NET
instead of locally – this has several advantages:

You may have many branches, all of these connected to Tally.NET. You create a
Tally.NET identity at the HO. The branches authorise access to the companies created in
their installations of Tally.ERP 9, to this user. Now whenever this person travels to the
branches, he uses a common username/password to login to such authorised
companies.
• If the user needs to change his password, he needs to do this at only one place.
• If the user needs to be removed, he needs to be removed from only the location
where the identity was created.

Again your Chartered Accountant, who uses the Auditors Edition, tells you his Tally.NET
identity (not his password!). You authorise this user to the companies you wish him to
access, and define his rights. Now you could send your data to him, and only he could
access it, or he could come over to your office and log in directly.

Remote Data – using Tally.ERP Licensed Application

The examples above pre-suppose that a user
has physical access to the data: either the data
was sent to him, or he visits the location where
Tally.ERP is installed.

Powerful as these capabilities are, our desire to

enable ‘anywhere’ access to your company data,
is not fully realised with these.

Tally.ERP 9 now makes available anywhere, anytime access with the Remote User
services of Tally.NET.

In the illustration above, you log in with your Tally.NET identity from a licensed
Tally.ERP 9. This is possible even from your notebook with a wireless Internet
connection, or from a Tally.ERP 9 that is available at your customers and suppliers
offices. You get full access to your data and are able to perform operations as you
would normally – obviously limited by the authorisation granted to you.

Other than the obvious advantages this brings to you, some of the other significant
ways that that your business benefits:

Your Chartered Accountant can access information without being physically present, or
without requiring data to be sent to his offices. Access is real time, while other users are
accessing data!

Your business benefits from the deep experience that your Chartered Accountant brings
- continuously. Your books of accounts are in a state of continuous audit, relieving you
of last minute issues that can occur with various regulatory bodies.

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Also, your field personnel can log-in orders, look up stock positions, outstanding and so
on from their notebooks or even from the PC at your customer location.

Remote Data – using Tally.ERP Educational Application

To truly deliver anywhere remote user capabilities, all remote facilities are available from
Tally.ERP Educational – a free download – making no difference to a remote user
whether he is on a licensed or on an educational version. With an available Internet
connectivity field personnel can become remote users from a cyber café, an internet
enabled notebook or from their homes.

However the power of having local data, synchronizing with the head office or working
off-line (without an active Internet connection) will not be available as the capability to
work locally is available only with the licensed application.

Remote User – Product Capability

Refer to the Deposit Cash example on page 6. When remote services are being used,
the product capabilities are limited (or enhanced) to the capabilities of the Tally.ERP 9
installed at the remote location.

As an example if the remote user is using a lower version of Tally.ERP 9 that does not
support a feature, even though this capability is available at the location that your data
resides, the feature will not be available at the remote location. This is easily remedied
as the latest Tally.ERP 9 can be easily downloaded and installed in minutes, if this
capability is required.

Security and Confidentiality of Data

The core security principle used for Data Confidentiality is that 'servers are vulnerable to
hacking, but clients are not'.

This principle follows from the fact that a 'client' does not provide 'inward' access to
anyone - and, therefore, remains immune to hacking. The way this has been
implemented by us is, that even though the “customer’s data” is 'served' from the
customer’s office, it is done by making the system a 'client' of our Tally.NET gateway.
In the same manner, the 'CA' or 'Remote User' connects to Tally.NET as a client. Now,
the communication between the 'data server' and the 'remote user' is 'managed' through
this environment. Even though the 'remote user' gets the experience of using a 'server'
- the data source remains immune to hacking - since it never becomes a 'server'.

Tally.NET is secure. There are different ways to look at security. Following are three
critical aspects:

1. Connecting/publishing a company on Tally.NET does not transfer the company data

onto the Tally.NET servers. It simply establishes a circuit to Tally.NET, which can be
used by the remote user to access the data. It is like an extended LAN where your data
remains with you on your chosen server but clients can get what they want on their
application without actually making any copy of the data as long as the company is open
and connected. You can always control what a remote user can access using the same
security controls which applies to a normal local user.

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2. When a company is connected/published, the machine/port is not opened as a server
on to the Internet. Both the Tally’s i.e. the one which connects the company and the
one which accesses the company connect as two clients to Tally.NET which co-ordinates
between them like a secure exchange system. You can become prone when you connect
to the Internet as a server. This is like a normal browsing connection in which you
choose what you want to see and not allow anybody else to see that you are available
on the Internet.

3. Advanced algorithms and handshake processes ensure that nobody can spoof
themselves and connect to Tally.NET.

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Tally.ERP 9 Release 3 (Oct-Dec 2008)
Beginning with Release 3 in October, the complete capabilities of Release 3 will be
delivered in decimal releases by December 2008.

Technology & Capability Enhancements

Performance and Volume Handling
The growth of most economies has improved operational volumes for many businesses.
Combined with increased process maturity and compliances, we can expect demands for
higher performance and managing greater data volumes. Consequently, Tally.ERP 9 will
build increasing capabilities across the releases. Release 3 will support enhancements
that improve performance by up to 20 times over our previous products.

Remote Access Capabilities

The remote access capabilities described above in the section “Local and Remote User
Services” will be available in this release.

Using SMS
With Tally.ERP 9, the pervasive use of cell phones is put to another use: SMS callback.

Without needing a ‘full featured’ phone with the latest capabilities, you can authorise
specific cell phone numbers to seek specific information, by sending an SMS to
Tally.NET. The data is retrieved from the company (the computer needs to have an
active internet connection, and Tally.ERP 9 running. No data is stored on the Tally.NET
servers) and an SMS sent back.

Highly useful when you need to check cash & bank balances, accounts receivable and
payable and sales data – on the move, anytime with the simplicity of an SMS.

Support Centre
This was mentioned in the section under Single & Multi-Site Management. What this
specifically means is that you can now log in support incidents & queries from within
Tally.ERP 9, and track the resolution from here as well. Site and Account administrators
can get to report on, and drill down into details, for a site or the entire account – this
can help you identify aspects of training (on the product or your business processes) –
and you could, perhaps, seek the services of our partners to fill any gaps.

KnowledgeBase Access
The immense flexibility and power of this ‘simple’ product –Tally.ERP 9 – renders the
capability to manage various business needs. Many of these are non-obvious. Over time
we have captured and continue to, many of these into a Knowledge Base.

You can now take advantage of this massive data store that is easily searchable from
within Tally.ERP 9.

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Configuration Management
Tally.ERP 9 supports product configuration (and reconfiguration) from within the
application itself, without the need to externally configure .ini files. The capability to
centrally manage these configurations, for the various users, is also supported, again
from within the application itself.

Add-on’s Management
Third party add-on’s, from the TE marketplace, or custom built by our integration and
support partners, can now be better managed. Users can be prevented from disabling
these add-on’s or adding unauthorized ones. Again this ensures that specific business
processes and controls you require are not disabled or circumvented.

TDL Enhancements
The Tally Definition Language, as well as Tally Developer, the integrated development
environment for TDL, have been significantly enhanced. The list of technical and
capability enhancements are available on request.

These are expected to significantly reduce development costs as well as help deliver
better extensions and integrations with Tally.ERP 9.

Functional Enhancements
Many new functionalities will be available with this release, and several other available
functional capabilities have been either redesigned or improved substantially. A very
small list follows.

Cash Accounting
Several business processes and practices are based on cash accounting (as different
from the ‘normal’ accrual system). Notable among these is the Indian Services Industry
– especially impacted with the provisions of the service tax rules. Also, in practice, many
service professionals find cash accounting more ‘realistic’ since final payments often do
not materialise!

While keeping with the common and simple accrual system of accounting, with one
click, switch Tally.ERP 9 to the cash basis of accounting – including your P&L. You
continue to use the standard capabilities, say of Accounts Receivable, to follow up on
receivables as well.

Enhanced Statutory Capabilities

Employees Provident Fund Form 12A, Form 5,Form 10,Form 3A,Form 6A etc. ESI
Monthly Statement, Payment Challan, Form 3, Form 5, Form 6, Register 28PT
Computation Report, PT Monthly Report, Payroll Processes, Fringe Benefits Tax, Form
ITR 8, Bifurcations and more

Special Features of the Auditors’ Edition

Tally.ERP 9 extends your enterprise further. Used with the Authentication &
Authorisation capabilities described earlier, you can now leverage the deep domain and
statutory expertise of the Chartered Accountant community. Tax & Statutory audits are
an obvious benefit. Continuous audits, business process outsourcing, receivable and

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payable support, sales force augmentation, business process optimization and so on…
opening up your business to take advantage of the many advisory & professional
services that can now be remotely offered at affordable costs.

In Release 3 the Auditors’ Edition will enable the auditor to compile information, form his
opinion and print the Tax Audit annexure as required under Sec. 44AB. The following
clauses are available as required in annexure Form 3CD:

1. Bonus PF, ESI Recoveries (Clause 16)

2. Amounts inadmissible u/s 40A(3)
3. Payments u/s 43B (Clause 21)
a) Employer’s Contribution
b) Tax Collected at Source
c) Service Tax
d) Value Added Tax
4. Loans / Deposits Accepted (Clause 24(a))
5. Loans / Deposits Repaid (Clause 24(b))
6. Fringe Benefits Tax (Annexure II)

Statutory compliance audits will also be available in this release.

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Tally.ERP 9 Release 4 (Apr-Sep 2009)
Technology & Capability Enhancements
As IT systems enlarge to cater to growing needs, the IT systems themselves tend to
require a system to keep it going – the additional complexity, people and support costs
often eat into the profitability of the business that IT was to grow in the first place!

Core to our philosophy that additional capabilities we deliver must be available without
significant IT overhead added, Release 4 will come with these technological capabilities
and is scheduled for a mid 2009 release:

Multi-session, Multi-threaded
Imagine that many users are accessing Tally.ERP 9 simultaneously. Some are entering
information, some editing and some taking reports. This release will come with
innovative, even path breaking object technology, to ensure that each user gets the
performance and response irrespective of the actions of the others. All this comes to you
without any additional setup, tweaking, performance tuning, administration, log analysis
and expensive system administrators.

Multi-session
Support for multiple application windows (which can even be launched by clicking on a
mail link or a ‘shortcut’) each of which are simultaneous ‘windows’ into different areas of
your business processes & reports (with dynamic data refresh and the display of
different views when resizing - smaller windows displaying a more consolidated view of
data) will improve organizational management and productivity.

Multi-threaded
A ‘thread’ is a specific task that is being performed by the microprocessor. Enhanced
capabilities will be enabled such that each application window can perform more tasks
simultaneously instead of linearly, including processing messages from the server. Multi-
core processors, even on the desktop, are now common. We will take full advantage of
these as well.

Multi Stack Architecture for Scale-up & Scale-down

Deployments
To deliver the capabilities described above, and the ones that follow, Tally.ERP 9 will
become ‘componentised’ – consisting of several layers of programs – often referred to
as ‘n-tier architecture’.

These software components are horizontally scalable, meaning that you can add one
more computer to increase the computing power needed for a layer. The ‘Power of
Simplicity’ is that this addition is as easy as connecting a computer to your network and
defining its ‘role’ – thus giving you the ability to configure and reconfigure these to meet
specific work load demands.

In the same way, you can remove systems as needed, or collapse them into a single
system – all of them even on a notebook, if required.
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Thus within a single flavor (see Editions Nomenclature, Page 8), you can scale up to the
editions limit, or scale down to a single user - single system, at will. What this implies is
that you can grow your IT hardware systems as per business needs, and not just as per
the demands of the software specifications.

High Transaction Capacity with Low Latency & Management

Let us say that you start generating a report that needs to be extracted from a few
thousand vouchers. This process is run in a ‘session’, which is isolated from all other
users. Even if other users delete or modify any of the vouchers needed for the report,
while the report is being compiled, there is no impact on this session and you will get to
see the report as if these other users did not exist.

In the same way, the user performing the edit will also be isolated. After the edit, he
can open the voucher and see it with the changes he made, perhaps even delete it.

The architecture described above will in itself deliver substantial performance and
transaction handling capacity. To push performance further in those cases when the
storage media (typically the hard disk) is busy with other operations, additional
capabilities will store these transactions ‘temporarily’ in a ‘Q’ for later write while the
user is free to continue his work (these transactions are protected against power failures
and so on).

An immediate benefit will be in cases where massive data is imported, say from branch
locations. The process will be very fast, resulting in savings in time and connectivity
costs.

From technology management perspective, again these are part of deliberately ‘hidden’
features – implying no additional IT management issues & costs.

Payment Engine for Debit & Credit Cards

One of the barriers for most traders to support the acceptance of these plastic cards has
been the high entry barrier that merchant bankers necessarily impose – seeking
assurances for minimum business and so on. On the other hand, the issuance of plastic
cards has been growing and there are millions of customers who shop with these
regularly – leaving many to lose out the occasional and large ticket sales.

Release 4 will facilitate online payments by you using a variety of payment mechanisms
(NEFT, online banking, credit cards), as well as receive payments (Debit / Credit Cards,
NEFT etc).

Functional Enhancements
Online Banking and Reconciliation
With collaboration with Banks who wish to facilitate their customers with this capability,
we will provide Online Banking - including Payment Instructions, Standing Instructions,
DD, NEFT,RTGS Transfers, Balance Queries, Instruction Status, Automated or Semi-
Automated Bank Reconciliation.
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Point-of-Sale for most Retail Environments
“India is a land of retailers.” This oft heard statement is actually true of most economies.

Release 4 will support dedicated POS terminals, with Credit/Debit Card, Discount
Coupons and various other payment mixes, Loyalty support, schemes, multi-layered
supervisory control, simultaneous keyboard and scanner controls, integrated or isolated
printing of bill and credit card auth slips, item substitution, rate markup/markdowns,
integration with measuring devices - such as weighing scales, bill suspension and
retrieval, bill reversals and cancellations, etc. It can also be used for other store
operations (receipting, inventory management etc), and general business operations
(finance and accounts) - both on the same machine or separate machines.

Income Tax
Release 3 already will have comprehensive IT coverage covering corporate & individual
income tax including typical payroll requirements and e-Returns.

Exim Documentation
Import & export documentation has become a growing need with the world economy
becoming more open. This requirement will be supported, additionally covering the
processes that need to be managed along with the documentation.

Job Costing
The enhanced Job Costing will support most job costing needs to a level of granularity
that is increasingly needed. We expect that you will be able to handle most, if not all,
project accounting needs as well.

Fixed Assets
To take advantage of tax breaks as well as to manage organizational assets, this feature
will support all requirements – from opening assets, adding, removing, amalgamating,
grouping, vendor tagging, AMC’s, servicing, service calendars, repairs and upkeep,
refurbishing, breaking-down, depreciating and disposal for complete fixed asset
management.

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Tally.ERP 9 Release 5 (Jan-Apr 2010)
Scheduled for an early 2010 timeframe, this release will build deeper capabilities and
functionality to help improve your retained income.

Technology & Capability Enhancements

Unlimited Volume Handling
With massive data volumes you will likely hit the limits (or performance issues) of the
hardware itself, especially for massive simultaneous reads and writes. The architecture
will now support multiple database file servers – with users reading and writing to any of
these automatically. In the event of a server failure, connected users to this server will
start working off the other server(s), ensuring that your IT systems continue to work.
The failed server can be set right and reconnected – live – while the system is running,
data will be updated and users will connect again to take advantage of the new server
power available.

Take expansions – business load increases could imply the need to add additional
servers. With Tally.ERP 9 running, add these servers (and remove them if needed for
maintenance) and the new capacity is added and available - all this without
administration overheads and tuning.

High Availability & Continuity System

High Availability – the capacity of an IT system to be available for all operations during
normal load and abnormal loads (festival sales or annual internal audits as examples)
becomes increasingly critical with increasing contributions that IT systems make to your
business.

Release 5 will support several technical capabilities to boost availability and business
continuity. Take live backups. Without the need to shut down operations, or slow them
down, you can perform backups. In the case of a disaster, and your needing to restore
from these backups, the process will be as simple as pointing to the backup – and you
are up and ready. Business continuity and time-to-recover can be less than an hour!

Take another common problem in distributed environments – the issue of getting

everyone in the organization to be on the same version. You have a mobile user who
connects to the system after a gap and he realises that he is on an older version.
Managing the application deployment, patches, extensions and so on is a huge (and
ongoing) project in itself.

Tally.ERP 9 will extend the label of ‘availability’ to this aspect as well – ensuring that
connected systems in a deployment are automatically brought up to the right version
and configuration without requiring the intervention of the IT department.

High Extendibility & Integrate-ability

Tally.ERP 9, from Release 3 on, is fully extendable with its own Domain Specific
Language (TDL: Tally Definition Language) and a rich set of developer tools bundled
into a Developer Kit. The kit comes with full editions of Tally.ERP 9 enabling

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development partners, or your internal IS team, to develop & test applications in
isolation of your production system.

With Release 5, integration of Process Engines to the Data Exchange Servers will allow
Tally.ERP 9 to be an 'integrated' client or server to any other application - either through
direct seamless interaction or through EAI buses.

Collaborative Commerce Engine using Tally.NET

Release 5 includes the ability to 'find' new suppliers and buyers who meet your criteria -
virtually 'extending' your business reach. You can yourself be 'discovered' by others,
and you can 'discover' others and start commerce with them. Of course, your existing
suppliers and buyer interaction will be simplified and made more paperless and more
transparent (no more 'we will fax you the dispatch details'… if it is dispatched, you will
know - if it is not, you will know!).

Powered with the remote user capabilities you will be able to take full advantage of this
extended enterprise and reach from within Tally.ERP 9 even while on the move.

Rule Based Access/Process/Workflow Configurations

Does work actually ‘flow’ in a controlled manner in an organization? Can you really
capture in advance who does what, when, how…? How exceptions will be handled –
even what exceptions can occur? Will you know in advance that an emergency purchase
will be required to get your business get back to its feet without going through the flow
of Quote-Order-Receipt?

Tally, as an organization, with many hundred employees, local and international offices,
and multiple functional departments was itself studied to see how work ‘flows’ and how
we could configure a work flow system – keeping in mind that people travel, have roles
changed, authority changed, away on leave and with business ‘exceptions’ sometimes
the norm, rather than an exception.

Seen from a people viewpoint (instead of ‘document-centric’ view):

• People have general authority (as part of one or more roles)
• People have specific authority (say sign checks over a limit)
• People are denied specific rights (cannot authorise a PO)
• Multiple people can perform tasks
• People can ‘authorise’ some one else to act on his behalf – top management
might not even work on IT systems, giving verbal instructions
• People are often not directly reachable, traveling or unable to access IT systems

Also:
• There are simple rules on what must be done – say a PO is needed for a Goods
Receipt, yet business exigencies can and do happen
• Even these ‘rules’ are discovered over a period of time, and it is really difficult to
get any department to clearly document what is done, under what conditions, by
what authority and when

The Workflow capabilities in Release 5 will enable real, usable & practical use of helping
your organization to work – with dashboards, document links that can be mailed, ‘on
behalf of’ activities, exception reporting and a security system that is as broad or
granular as needed – and configurable on-the-fly, as you use the product.
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This implies that this process will also follow our legendary ‘incrementally implement’
philosophy – keeping the entire process so light-weight that you will not require an army
of business process re-engineering consultants to force-fit the way you work into a rigid
workflow system.

Functional Enhancements
Publish-to-sell combining Payment Engine and Tally.NET
Collaborative commerce gets a further boost with publish-to-sell capabilities – making
your products available to the entire Tally customer ecosystem.

‘Mark’ specific inventory as ‘publish for online sales’. Integrated with our payment
engine, interested people could make a purchase, without the need for you to integrate
a shopping cart and e-commerce engines – we’ll even handle the finance flow as well as
the PO into your system!

Field Force Automation

Fully mature connectivity, remote users, the workflow and Tally.NET capabilities, as well
as more pervasive mobile computing by the time of Release 5, will put the power of
Tally.ERP 9 in the hands of your mobile workforce – sales, engineering and support.

Complex BoM and Materials Requirement Calculations

While the Bill of Material capabilities available from many years will continue to be
extended, broad based and powered, this Release will provide support for BoM’s with
tens of thousands of components, alternates, re-order & MOQ, multi-location
warehouses, lead times, open PO’s, material in QA and in transit to support the most
complex material calculations that you will need.

Coupled with the connected world of suppliers, their stock numbers, lead times and
prices, we expect that BoM management, cost computation and projected timelines will
ease the burden of your stocking problems and warehouse costs.

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In Conclusion
This document must still be considered an overview, with only some of the major
technical and functional capabilities highlighted. As an organization we remain
committed to bring you the best user experience that can be delivered – from a product,
ecosystem, commercial & organizational support perspectives.

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