Switching to Ledgerly
Bring your books across.
Changing accounting software is mostly one question: what happens to the data you already have? This page answers it plainly — what moves, how, what doesn't, and when in the year to do it.
What moving actually involves
Whatever you are coming from, a migration is four things — and only the first is strictly required to start.
Masters and opening balances
Your ledger accounts, customers, vendors and banks, with the balance each one carries on the day you start. This is the part that makes your first report correct.
Inventory items
Products and services with opening stock, if you hold any.
History, if you want it
Past sales invoices and purchase bills. Optional — many businesses start clean from a date and keep the old system readable for reference.
Bank statements
Imported and reconciled from your books start date onward.
Coming from Tally
Export Masters from Tally as XML and upload it under Imports → Masters & Opening Balances. Ledgerly parses your ledgers and parties directly from that file — no re-typing, no intermediate spreadsheet.
Inventory, invoice and bill history come across as spreadsheets rather than XML: export them from Tally to Excel, then fill the matching sheet in Ledgerly's import template. The template ships one workbook with a sheet per import, and every sheet you don't touch imports nothing.
Coming from Excel or Google Sheets
This is the shortest path, because you already hold the data in rows. Download Ledgerly_Import_Template.xlsx from any import page and paste your columns in. Dates normalise as you type — 11/09/2025 becomes 11/Sep/2025, so a month can never be misread as a day, which is the most common way an import goes quietly wrong. Amounts are formatted in the Indian convention throughout.
Coming from Busy, Marg or another package
There is no direct connector, and you don't need one. If your system exports a spreadsheet, Ledgerly can read it: when a layout doesn't match the template, Imports → Mapping Templates lets you say once which column is the date, which is the narration, which is the amount — and that mapping is reused on every future import of the same format.
Coming from your bank
Bank exports vary more than anything else, so the bank importer recognises the common wordings on its own — Txn Date, Narration, Withdrawal, Deposit — and finds the header row even when the file opens with several rows of account details above it.
Every import is logged under Imports → History: when it ran, which file, how many rows. You can always see what came from where.
What doesn't come across
Worth knowing before you start, rather than after.
- Tally vouchers don't import as XML. Masters do; transaction history comes through the spreadsheet route.
- TDL customisations have no equivalent. If your Tally runs bespoke TDL, that logic doesn't transfer and needs rethinking rather than porting.
- Print layouts don't transfer. Ledgerly generates its own invoice and voucher PDFs.
- Your old system stays readable. Nothing here deletes anything. Keep it for reference as long as you like — and for the statutory retention period, you should.
When to switch
The cleanest moment is the start of a financial year: opening balances are the ones your accountant has just finalised, and nothing is split across two systems mid-year.
You don't have to wait, though. Ledgerly asks for a books start date when you set up, and everything before that date simply isn't its business — you carry in the balances as at that date and work forward. A mid-quarter switch is normal; what matters is that the date is deliberate and your opening balances match it.
If you'd rather not do it alone, a demo covers the migration specifically — bring an export and we'll go through it.
Try it with your own data
Free while we're in early access. Import your masters, post an invoice, and see whether the numbers look like your books.