Tally leads the way to make India GST compliant

With more than 5 million GSTN registered businesses under its wings, Tally Solutions, the premier Indian software company has set its sight on helping businesses across the board with GST compliance. The government estimates that around 9 million businesses will fall under the GST net. This coupled with the importance of technology in the GST regime has got software vendors smacking their lips. However, Tally has chosen a slightly different path compared to its peers. The company has been working extensively to not only equip businesses with the right technology for GST compliance but empower them with knowledge of how GST works. These efforts date back to August last year, when GST was announced.

The first among its GST awareness initiatives was the launch of an exclusive blog on GST (blogs.tallysolutions.com). The blog houses over 100 rich articles on GST law, rules, policies and procedures. It also has posts on impact of GST on various types of businesses and opinion columns by eminent representatives of the industry. All articles in the blog are available in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu & Kannada so that the reach out can be effective. The blog has so far had a whopping 33 million + page views.

Following closely on the heels of the blog was an exclusive mobile app of Tally for GST which is essentially GST in the pocket for businesses. The app is available both on the Playstore as well as the App Store and apart from the knowledge section, it has a news tab which keeps the user updated on all GST developments, a quiz for people to test their knowledge and provides a simple way for existing Tally customers to move to the GST ready version of Tally. The app has been downloaded more than 2 lakh times already and was recently one of the featured apps on the Playstore.

Tally has also been driving several GST awareness events across the country to help businesses understand the nuances of the new law. To ensure effective reach out, the company collaborated with associations like CAIT (The Confederation of All India Traders), FAIDA, CII, ASSOCHAM among others and has so far conducted more than 5000 events across the country. The events saw healthy participation with more than 3 lakh business owners getting benefitted. The company worked closely with its 20000+ strong partner network for these events.

Tally has also been working closely with Chartered Accountants, Tax Practitioners, Tax Consultants and accountants in a bid to help their clients with GST compliance. They have sought domain expertise from this community for their events while handling the technology bit themselves. With a view to create a pool of GST knowledge and bring members of the community together, the company launched an exclusive online portal, community.tallysolutions.com which hosts a GST knowledge sharing platform, authored articles by CAs and interactions with eminent tax practitioners. Tally firmly believes that the community will play a key and active role in making India GST compliant.

As the country moved closer to the launch of GST, Tally had been up to doing what it has done so well over the years. Creating a simple, easy to use and reliable GST product for businesses. A week before the launch, Tally launched its GST ready version, 

Tally.ERP 9 Release 6.0. The product promises GST billing from Day 1, accurate invoicing and returns and simple and easy setup for new users. To enable their existing customers to move to the new version with ease, Tally has built a robust online help portal, 

help.tallysolutions.com where users can easily get their queries answered through self-help guides, videos and documents. On the day of the creation of this article, Tally’s GST ready version had been downloaded more than 1.5 million times and more than half of Tally’s customers had moved to this release. To extend on-ground support to its customers and other businesses alike, the company plans to hold 7000 Tally GST Camps and Kendras across the country where people can get their Tally upgraded, buy a new license and even seek GST knowledge. To help businesses who have been using manual methods of book-keeping, Tally in association with Acer India and CAIT launched Biz Guru, a one stop plug and play solution for accounting and GST compliance. Biz Guru couples Acer’s robust hardware along with pre-installed GST ready Tally.ERP 9.

A few months back, Tally also qualified to become one of the 34 qualified GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs). This will allow the company to extend GSTN connectivity services to tax payers in a seamless manner. Tally’s next major version of its GST product will have the benefits of GSP embedded in it which will further simplify the lives of business people.

A recent study conducted on GST preparedness among SMEs revealed that more than 65% of businesses have not yet adopted a GST software while 22% of them are deeply concerned about technology adoption for GST. Further, more than 40% admitted to not having adequate GST knowledge. However, Tally’s efforts in educating businesses across India on GST and equipping them with simple technology products are going a long way in narrowing these gaps and the aspiration of a GST compliant nation seems on track.