On Sunday 06 Feb 2005 8:14 am, Saswata Banerjee & Associates wrote:
First, no software has import facility from tally. Tally uses a proprietory database from which you cannot access any data. What some people do is to export data from tally and then bring it in to other accounting softwares. I am sure AVSAP can also do it.
avsap uses a a postgresql backend - being opensource, the database structure is clearly available for study. I'm told tally has odbc support, so import of tally data into a spreadsheet and export of the same to avsap would be a fairly trivial exercise - just need to massage the data, make an odbc connection from the spreadsheet to the avsap db and its done.
Speaking as an accountant, Tally is really crap. It would be a good software for home accounting or for a very small company where the entire accounts is done by one person and he is interested in manipulation of accounts for tax rather than getting correct or accurate accounts. It lacks the simplest of controls and in any normal business (specially corporate) scenario, it is a timebomb waiting to explode.
avsap is designed on two levels - one is the dataentry part through gui for the enduser - but even here it is a requirement that the enduser has a basic knowledge of the principles of double-entry bookkeeping. The second level is where a more aware accountant can access the database (with gui tools like pgadmin or phppgadmin) to create more complex controls. For example, preventing backdating entries and deletion of vouchers/invoices or making audit trails.
Unfortunately, the main difference between avsap and tally is that tally has dozens of full time professional programmers and a budget running in crores whereas avsap has two part time amateurs and no budget at all!