Tally’s GST-Ready Software Release Plan

With just a few weeks left for the roll out of GST, one of the burning questions on your mind as a Tally user is probably, “How will Tally support my business to become GST Ready?”
With this blog post, you will understand Tally’s GST Software strategy, and how you can smoothly transition into GST with Tally.ERP 9.
 

State of readiness of GSTN
As you know, the GST Council has approved the law, and the rules are now being finalised. Finalisation of GSTN APIs and readiness of GSTN are closely tied to the finalisation of GST rules.  Until the GSTN foundation is available with required stability, it is impossible to create a robust and usable GSTN connected product for you.
To overcome this dependency, and to help you, our users, be ready for GST, we have formalised a clear GST Software roll out plan.

GST Software Roll Out Plan

Tally.ERP 9 Release 6.0 – Starting with GST
Our first major GST Software release will happen this June. Moving to thisGST Software release will ensure that you are ready for GST from Day 1. Using this release, you can run all your business operations complying with the new GST rules.
What are the first steps to be ready for GST?
The crucial first steps for GST readiness include:

• Creating GST-compliant transactions
• Printing GST Invoices/Bills
• Maintaining books of accounts
• Making your data visible online on GSTN – this is a new activity for you, and some aspects of it might surprise you. To give you more confidence in the new era of filing GST returns, we advise that you follow a two-step approach:
  • Use the error-solving capability (also known as triangulation) provided in our GST Ready Software to ensure that you do not upload wrong transactions, and always have correctness of data.
  • Upload verified transactions to GSTN to minimise any back and forth due to errors.

With Tally.ERP 9 Release 6, you can start running your entire business operations to comply with GST rules using the following capabilities:
Running your day-to-day business operations

1. Set up all the required tax rates, and maintain GSTIN details of all your suppliers and customers.
2. Ensure that all new transactions are GST-compliant, and print GST- invoices.

Submitting your compliance returns

1. Use Tally.ERP 9 Release 6.0 to verify correctness of transactions, in accordance with GST rules, before uploading data.
2. Export data into a correctly formatted Microsoft Excel sheet using Tally.ERP 9 Release 6.0.
3. Import this Excel file into the Offline Utility provided by GSTN and generate an output file (in JSON format).
4. Upload this extracted file to the GSTN portal.

At the time of publishing this article, the format of GSTR 2 form is not yet available on the GSTN Offline Utility. Once the format is available, we will give you updated capabilities with subsequent releases of Tally.ERP 9. With this, you can import your supplier’s GSTN data into Tally.ERP 9 by using the GSTN utility, and fix purchase-related errors. This will help you easily manage the status of tax returns and books, and stay in sync with your GSTN data.
In the initial phases, we do expect stabilization and refinement in the law, rules and APIs. To support these changes, we will continuously work towards providing the right solution to you with minor/maintenance releases on Tally.ERP 9 Release 6 and the next major release Tally.ERP 9 Release 7.

Tally.ERP 9 Release 7
With Tally.ERP 9 Release 7, we intend to give you a “connected experience” with the GSTN system and solve pain-points as shared earlier (What to Expect from GST and GST Ready Software).  Our release date and features are dependent on when we can use stable GSTN APIs and provide you with a robust GST Software.  For this, we will continue to work closely with the GSTN.
Each of our releases will focus on better compliance convenience for the diversity of businesses that we serve!
Update: Tally.ERP 9 Release 6 (GST-Ready) is available now. Please download it and share your feedback by replying to this post.