Tally reports every owner should check

Daily: what happened yesterday

The Day Book guide has a five-minute review routine.

Weekly: money owed and money due

• Bill-wise receivables with ageing: who owes what, how old. Focus on bills over 30 and 60 days and the top ten parties.
• Bill-wise payables: supplier bills due this week and next. Plan payments against expected collections.
• Sales register for the week: compare with the same week last month.

Warning sign: receivables growing faster than sales. That means customers are taking longer to pay. See ageing analysis explained.

Weekly: stock

• Stock summary by group: total holding and the groups that grew.
• Items below reorder level: if you maintain reorder levels.
• Slow-moving items: items with no outward movement in 90 days.

Warning sign: stock value rising while sales are flat. Money is getting locked in the godown.

Monthly: profit and position

Read the P&L month against the same month last year, not just against last month, because most trades are seasonal. The P&L guide walks through it.

Monthly: GST

• GSTR-1 data from Tally: check for invoices with missing GSTINs, wrong place of supply, or items without HSN.
• GSTR-3B data: output tax, input tax credit and net payable.
• Purchases vs GSTR-2B: your accountant should reconcile these so you do not claim credit that suppliers have not reported.

This is general information, not tax advice; due dates and rules can change, so check gst.gov.in or ask your CA.

Warning signs at a glance

• Cash in books does not match cash in hand.
• Suspense or "misc" ledgers carrying balances.
• Customers with credit balances (you owe them) that nobody explains.
• Gross margin dropping two months in a row.
• Large journals at month end with vague narrations.
• Bank balance in books differs from the bank statement for weeks.

A worked example of reading together

A paint distributor's September P&L shows sales of ₹62 lakh, up 15% on last September, and gross margin steady at 14%. Good news, until the weekly reports are read alongside. Receivables have risen from ₹48 lakh to ₹71 lakh over the same period, and over-60-day bills have doubled. Stock has risen by ₹9 lakh, mostly in one brand's slow-moving shades. The bank overdraft is near its limit.

Read alone, the P&L says the business is doing well. Read together, the reports say growth is being bought with credit and stock, and cash is running short. The owner tightens credit for dealers with old bills, runs a scheme to clear the slow shades, and delays a planned purchase. That is the point of reading a small set of reports regularly: each one corrects the blind spots of the others.

Build the habit

Reports help only if they are read on a schedule. Put the daily three on your phone first thing in the morning, the weekly ones on Monday, and the monthly ones in the first week of the next month after the accountant has finished entries. Ask the same questions every time; patterns stand out quickly.

Who prepares, who reads

The accountant should keep entries current so reports are right; the owner should read them. If the owner relies on the accountant's summary alone, they see only what the accountant thinks is important. Ten minutes of direct reading each day builds the owner's own feel for the numbers, and makes the conversation with the accountant and CA sharper. Before a CA meeting, see preparing for a meeting with your CA.

All of these on the phone

Cashflow OS shows these reports from your synced Tally data: Day Book, cash and bank book, bill-wise outstanding with ageing, payables, stock and item summaries, P&L, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, expenses, top customers and a cashflow forecast, plus GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B views. Home compares today, the month and the year with the period before. Reports export to Excel and PDF. See financial reports.