AssembloERP
Let us start where most vendor content refuses to: Tally earned its place. It is fast, it is offline, every CA in the country knows it, and for vouchers, GST and statutory reporting it is genuinely hard to beat at the price.
The problem is not Tally. It is that a growing manufacturer keeps asking Tally to answer questions it was never designed to answer, and then blames the software for being vague.
The six questions where Tally runs out
- "What do I need to buy to deliver these orders?" That is MRP — exploding multi-level BOMs against open orders, current stock and lead times. Tally's manufacturing journal handles a recipe, not a plan.
- "Which work order is where, right now?" Work orders with routings, operations and stage-wise status are an operations concept. Books do not track a job through five machines.
- "Can I take this order for the 20th?" Capacity planning against machine and shift availability. Nothing in an accounting package can answer it.
- "How much material did my fabricator actually consume?" Job work with expected yield, allowed loss and reconciliation per challan — the leak we wrote about in job work without leakage.
- "What did this job really cost?" Actual material plus labour plus overhead, per job, against the quotation. See true job costing.
- "What is live stock across three godowns, by batch?" Multi-location, batch-wise, with reservations against confirmed orders.
Notice that none of these are accounting questions. That is the whole point. You have not outgrown Tally; you have grown a second problem it does not cover.
Three honest options
Option 1: keep Tally, add an operations layer
Operations — stock, production, job work, dispatch — run in the ERP. Summarised entries flow to Tally for statutory books. Your CA is undisturbed, the shop floor gets a real system, and you avoid a risky accounting migration. For most businesses under Rs 15 crore, this is what we recommend.
Option 2: replace it entirely
Worth it when your accounts and operations are so tangled that two systems mean double entry, or when you need one audit trail from purchase order to payment. Plan it properly: migration has real mechanics, and cut over at a quarter start.
Option 3: stay as you are, deliberately
A single-location shop with one operator and stable, simple products may be fine. Just make the decision consciously, with the number you are losing to guesswork written down, rather than drifting because change feels expensive.
Side by side, without the marketing
| Job | Tally | ERP with production |
|---|---|---|
| Vouchers, ledgers, GST returns | Excellent | Good, varies by product |
| Statutory reports your CA expects | Excellent | Usually needs mapping |
| Offline working | Native strength | Depends; ask specifically |
| Multi-level BOM & MRP | Not designed for it | Core function |
| Work orders & routings | No | Core function |
| Job-work yield reconciliation | Manual | Per challan, with allowed loss |
| Multi-location live stock | Limited | Core function |
| Role-based access on the floor | Coarse | Granular |
What to do next
Do not start with a demo. Write down those three decisions, and the number you would have needed. Bring that to any vendor — including us — and you will find out in ten minutes whether they are selling you the layer you actually need. When you are ready, our module list shows exactly which parts cover which job, and what it costs over three years.
