Starting a new financial year in TallyPrime: change the period or split?

Tally gives existing users three ways into a new financial year: change the current period, create a new company, or split the data. For most businesses, changing the period is enough. Balances from the previous year carry forward automatically, and you carry on without setting up the same masters again.

Changing the period leaves the company’s Financial year beginning from and Books beginning from dates as they are, and those dates shouldn’t be changed on the company alteration screen. Tally warns that doing so loses data and leaves a company that can’t be opened without rewriting the data.

Tally’s checklist before moving into a new year: account for pending purchase and sales bills, complete any foreign currency adjustments, and take a full backup of the data.

On the Gateway of Tally, press Alt+F2 (Period), enter the From and To dates of the new financial year, and press Enter. The current period and current date shown on the Gateway of Tally change to match. Use your own business’s year: Tally’s examples include January to December and April to March, depending on the country.

Alt+F2 changes the company’s working period. F2 on its own only changes the date of the voucher you’re entering or the period of the report you’re viewing.

Keeping every year in one company has a cost. The data grows each year, and Tally notes that performance may drop over time. That’s when splitting the data comes in.

Tally recommends restarting voucher numbers for each voucher type you use. Open Alt+G (Go To) > Alter Master > Voucher Type, choose the voucher type, and set Set/Alter additional numbering details to Yes. There you can set the starting number to 1, add Restart Numbering details (the date it applies from, the starting number and how often it restarts) and give the numbers a prefix or suffix.

These details aren’t available when the numbering method is Manual or None. Several numbering series for one voucher type, set up through F12 (Configure), need TallyPrime Release 3.0 or later.

Splitting keeps the original company as it is and creates one or two new companies from it. Tally suggests it when the volume of transactions is slowing TallyPrime down, the previous year is closed and audited, or you want each year in its own folder. It doesn’t suit books that aren’t final, years where audit adjustments are still expected, or small amounts of data.

In TallyPrime 6.0 and later, run Alt+Y (Data) > Split > Verify Data first, then Alt+Y (Data) > Split > Split Data, press S, confirm the Split from date, and choose From Split Date, Before Split Date or Into Two Companies. The new companies then appear in the list on the Gateway of Tally. Splitting needs the administrator password, and Tally says not to split from TallyPrime Server but from the licensed TallyPrime application.

Some things don’t come across. Sales and purchase orders aren’t carried forward, and neither are cost centre closing balances, which Tally suggests bringing forward with a journal voucher. Bank transactions left unreconciled for 180 days or more aren’t carried forward either. After a split, check that opening balances match last year’s closing balances, and look over receivables, payables, stock values and voucher numbering.

Our free year-end closing checklist puts the closing tasks in order. If you want help changing the period, renumbering vouchers or splitting a large company, Powercomputers supports TallyPrime users in every region of Tanzania by phone, WhatsApp and remote session.