Company Information

The very first time you start Tally, you would require to 'create' a company. 'Create Company' simply means giving basic information about the company whose books of accounts Tally is to maintain for you. Tally is smart, but it does need an introduction to your company. The initial screen would appear like this:



The Gateway of Tally screen is separated into four sections, – Title Area, Main Area (Ctrl + M), Calculator Area (Ctrl + N) and the Button Bar.

The screen elements of the Gateway of Tally screen is explained below:

Top Area
Top Area contains Version number, Release details (every time a new release of Tally is made, it is identified with a different release name like Release 3.14) and Current Date (the date configured in the computer). The name of the day, date, month and year is displayed in DD, MM, YYYY format on the left-hand side.

Tally logo is displayed at the centre of the Top Area.

The Product type (Tally Gold, Tally Silver, Tally Bronze or Educational) and Tally Serial Number appears on the upper-right corner. The software serial number is usually a unique number (taken directly from the TallyLock connected to the USB / Parallel port of the system). System time (the time configured in the computer) appears on the upper-right corner in Hour: Seconds: Minutes (HH/MM/SS) format.

Minimize Button
The Minimize button performs the standard Windows Operating Systems function (Windows 95 onwards), allowing you to minimize Tally and work on other applications. To restore Tally, click on the Tally icon on the taskbar.

Main Area (Gateway of Tally)
Main Area is separated into two areas:

Left-hand side area

Right-hand side area

The left-hand side area in Main Area provides information of Current Period, Current Date and List of Selected Companies (Name of the company and the date of last entry details).

The right-hand side area in the Main Area screen displays the Company Information menu (to select your instructions to Tally) > Select a Company, Create a Company, Backup a Company or Restore a Company.

Hot Keys
Hot keys are the text that are capitalized and are red in colour on all the menu screens. Typing any of the Hot Keys in the Company Info Screen will either take you to that particular screen or it may display the sub - menu’s within that Option.

Calculator Area
Press [Ctrl + N] to activate the calculator functionality. Calculator Area is used for calculator functions. Any type of Independent calculation can be done using calculator to get quick answers.

Button Bar
The buttons are designed to make the work easier and faster. These buttons vary from one screen to another based on the screen functionality. The buttons appear on the right hand side of the Tally screen. Only buttons relevant to the current screen will be active and the inactive buttons are greyed. These buttons are enabled with the short cut keys (like F1, F2 and so on). You can either click on these buttons or you can press the shortcut keys to access.)

On this screen, Tally displays the following buttons (keys):

Help (Alt + H) – to access Tally's online context-sensitive help (This feature is not available for Tally on RHEL)

Web Browser (Alt + W) – to access the Web Browser directly from Tally!

F1: Select Cmp – to access data from other data directories either on the local system or through the network.

F12: Configure – to access the configuration settings to manage the information put into Tally. Here, access the General Configuration to set country specific defaults. Use it before creating a company.

Note:
* Use the buttons on the right-hand side of the screen to explore the Potential of Tally.
* Press [Enter] wherever the cursor is placed in Gateway of Tally Menu’s and sub menu’s to know the Depth of Tally.

Buttons with a character or function key underlined means you have to press underlined character or the function key along with SHIFT key.

Buttons with a character or function key double underlined means you have to press character or the function key along with CTRL key.

F1: Press the shortcut function key to select a company

F1: Press SHIFT+F1 to shut a company

F8: Press CTRL+F8 to select the Credit Note voucher

Ctrl+M: Press Ctrl + M to access the Gateway of Tally.

Ctrl+N: Press Ctrl + N to access the Calculator/ODBC Server frame

Additional Information
The Tally Clock
While Tally processes data, you will see a clock on the screen indicating that you should wait until it disappears before performing the next action.