44 terms

Bank statement and Tally glossary

The vocabulary that sits between a downloaded statement and a posted voucher, defined plainly. Where a term is commonly got backwards, the definition says which way round it actually goes.

What do the core Tally terms mean?

The nouns Tally is built out of. Most import problems are really a misunderstanding of one of these.

Ledger: An account that transactions are posted to, such as a party, a bank account, or an expense head. Every voucher in Tally moves money between at least two ledgers. A ledger must exist before a voucher can name it, which is why an import either matches an existing ledger or creates one.
Group: The classification a ledger sits under, such as Sundry Debtors, Bank Accounts or Indirect Expenses. The group is what decides where a ledger appears in the Balance Sheet or Profit and Loss, so a ledger filed under the wrong group produces correct vouchers and a wrong financial statement.
Masters: The standing data of a Tally company: ledgers, groups, stock items, units and voucher types. Distinct from vouchers, which are the transactions. Importing a statement can create masters as a side effect, which is how a company ends up with four spellings of the same party.
Voucher: A single accounting entry in Tally, with a date, a type, an amount, and two or more ledger lines that balance. One row of a bank statement usually becomes one voucher.
Voucher type: The classification of a voucher: Payment, Receipt, Contra, Sales, Purchase, Credit Note or Debit Note. It records what KIND of transaction happened. It does not, on its own, tell you which direction the money moved, and treating it as if it did is a common and expensive mistake. The seven voucher types
Narration: The free-text description attached to a voucher or printed against a bank statement row. On a bank statement it is where the counterparty name, the payment rail and the reference number are all jammed together, which is why reading it well is most of the work in converting a statement. How the counterparty is read
Dr and CrDebit and Credit: The two sides of every entry. For a bank ledger, which is an ASSET, money coming in DEBITS the account and money going out CREDITS it. This is true of every row whatever voucher type it is filed under. Note that this is the opposite of how a bank describes your account to you, because on the bank’s own books your deposit is their liability.
SuspenseSuspense Account: A temporary holding ledger for an entry whose correct account is not yet known. Nothing is meant to stay there. In practice a bulk bank import that cannot identify a counterparty dumps everything into Suspense, and clearing it by hand afterwards is the work the import was supposed to save.
Opening balance: The balance a ledger carries at the start of a period. In Tally’s XML the sign convention is inverted from the amount fields: a NEGATIVE opening balance is a DEBIT balance. Getting this backwards flips a bank account between asset and overdraft.
Running balance: The balance printed against each row of a bank statement, after that transaction. It is the most reliable thing on the statement, because it is arithmetic rather than description: comparing consecutive balances tells you whether a row was money in or money out, without reading a single word of the narration.

What are the seven Tally voucher types?

What each one is for. The Contra entry is the one worth reading carefully, because it is the one most often posted the wrong way round.

ContraContra entry: A transfer between a company’s OWN accounts: cash to bank, bank to cash, or bank to bank. No income, no expense, and no outside party. Contra runs in BOTH directions: cash withdrawn from the bank and cash deposited into it are both Contra entries. Assuming a Contra is always a withdrawal is a well-known way to post every deposit backwards and move the closing balance by twice the amount.
Payment: Money leaving the business to an outside party: a supplier paid, a bill settled, salary disbursed. Credits the bank ledger.
Receipt: Money arriving from an outside party: a customer paying an invoice, interest credited, a refund received. Debits the bank ledger.
Sales: Recording a sale made, whether or not the money has arrived. Where GST applies, the tax is recorded on this voucher rather than when payment lands.
Purchase: Recording a purchase made, whether or not it has been paid for. The counterpart to a Sales voucher.
Credit Note: Reduces an amount a customer owes: a sales return, a discount allowed after invoicing, or a correction in the customer’s favour.
Debit Note: Reduces an amount owed to a supplier: a purchase return, or a claim raised against a supplier’s invoice.

What do the columns and codes on a bank statement mean?

The columns, codes and reference numbers that appear on an Indian bank statement, and what each is good for.

UTRUnique Transaction Reference: The reference number the RBI payment system assigns to a NEFT or RTGS transfer. It is 16 characters, and it is unique across the banking system, which makes it the strongest possible key for matching one bank’s outward entry to another bank’s inward entry.
RRNRetrieval Reference Number: A 12-digit reference carried by card and UPI transactions, used to trace a specific payment with the bank. The card equivalent of a UTR.
IFSCIndian Financial System Code: The 11-character code identifying a specific bank branch for electronic transfers. The first four characters are the bank, the fifth is always a zero, and the last six identify the branch. It often appears at the tail of a NEFT narration, where it is useful for confirming which bank the counterparty holds an account with.
MICR code: The 9-digit number printed in magnetic ink along the bottom of a cheque, identifying the city, bank and branch. Used in cheque clearing rather than electronic transfer.
Instrument numberCheque number: The serial number of the cheque or draft behind an entry. Carrying it through to the voucher is what makes reconciliation possible later, because it is how an uncleared cheque in your books is matched to the day it finally clears at the bank.
Value date: The date the bank actually applies a transaction to the balance, which can differ from the transaction date printed beside it. Where the two differ across a period end, the value date is the one that decides which period the entry belongs to.
OD accountOverdraft: A borrowing facility on a current account: the balance is allowed to go below zero up to an agreed limit. On a statement it shows as a credit balance where an asset would normally be, and in the Balance Sheet it belongs under liabilities, not under Bank Accounts.
CC accountCash Credit: A working-capital borrowing facility secured against stock and receivables, with a limit set from a periodic stock statement. Like an OD it usually runs in negative balance, and it is a liability rather than a bank asset.
Text-layer PDF: A PDF that contains the actual characters of the text, so software can read the figures exactly as the bank wrote them. The opposite is a scan or a photograph, which contains only a picture of text and has to be guessed at with OCR. A statement downloaded from net banking is almost always a text-layer PDF; one produced by a photocopier is not. Which file types work
Column mapping: Telling software which column of a statement holds the date, the narration, the debit, the credit and the balance, for a layout it does not already recognise. Because a layout belongs to a bank rather than to a statement, mapping one file correctly can be enough to read every future statement from that bank. Map your own columns

What is the difference between NEFT, RTGS, IMPS and UPI?

The systems that move the money. Which rail was used is usually the first token in a narration, and it is a strong hint about what kind of transaction it was.

NEFTNational Electronic Funds Transfer: An RBI transfer system that settles in batches, now running around the clock. No upper limit on value. Carries a UTR.
RTGSReal Time Gross Settlement: An RBI system that settles each transfer individually and immediately, intended for large values. The minimum is ₹2 lakh, so an RTGS entry on a statement is by definition a significant transaction.
IMPSImmediate Payment Service: An instant interbank transfer run by NPCI, available at all hours, typically used for smaller values than RTGS.
UPIUnified Payments Interface: NPCI’s instant payment system addressed by a virtual payment address rather than an account number. On a statement the counterparty usually appears as a UPI handle, which frequently identifies a person or an app rather than the registered business name.
NACHNational Automated Clearing House: The bulk mandate-based system behind recurring debits and credits: EMIs, SIPs, insurance premiums, salary runs and utility bills. A NACH debit on a statement is nearly always a repeating obligation rather than a one-off.

Which compliance terms affect how a bank entry is treated?

The regulatory vocabulary that decides how an entry has to be treated, and who is answerable for the data.

Financial yearFY: In India, 1 April to 31 March. A statement downloaded for a calendar period will usually straddle two financial years, which is why importing a full statement can put entries into a year that has already been closed.
BRSBank Reconciliation Statement: The statement explaining the difference between the bank balance in your books and the balance on the bank’s statement at the same date. The difference is normally timing: cheques issued but not yet presented, deposits not yet credited, and bank charges not yet recorded. BRS format in Tally
GSTIN: The 15-character GST identifier for a registered person. The first two digits are the state code and the next ten are the PAN, so a GSTIN both identifies the taxpayer and tells you which state they are registered in.
ITCInput Tax Credit: The credit a GST-registered buyer takes for tax paid on purchases, set against tax collected on sales. It is why a registered buyer compares prices net of GST while an unregistered buyer compares the amount actually paid.
TDSTax Deducted at Source: Tax withheld by the payer and remitted to the government on the recipient’s behalf. On a bank statement it shows as a payment smaller than the invoice, with the balance appearing separately as a TDS remittance.
DPDP ActDigital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: India’s personal data protection law. It matters to a practice because a client’s bank statement is personal data that the firm handles, and the obligations follow the firm rather than transferring to whichever software it used.
Data fiduciary: Under the DPDP Act, the party that decides why and how personal data is processed, and which carries the legal duty for it. A CA firm holding client bank statements is a data fiduciary. Sending those statements to a third-party service does not move that duty anywhere, which is the actual reason firms ask where a tool processes their files. Why on-device matters

What happens when a bank statement is imported into Tally?

The mechanics of an import, and the terms that come up when one goes wrong.

Tally XML: The XML format Tally accepts for importing masters and vouchers. Its details differ between Tally versions, and an older Tally does not reject an element it has never seen: it accepts the voucher, silently drops that element, and reports success. This is why an import can report a clean run and still be missing data. Bank statement to Tally XML
Tally gatewayODBC / HTTP gateway: The local network interface a running Tally exposes so other software on the machine can read and write data, configured under Connectivity in TallyPrime and normally on port 9000. Port 9999 is the licence server, not the data gateway. A modal dialog left open anywhere in Tally blocks the gateway completely.
REMOTEID: A stable identifier carried on an imported voucher so that re-importing the same transaction UPDATES the existing voucher instead of adding a second one. Without it, every re-upload silently duplicates the whole statement while still reporting success.
PartyCounterparty: The other side of a transaction: who the money came from or went to. On a bank statement the party is not a field, it is buried inside the narration alongside the rail, the reference number and the branch code, and extracting it is a separate problem from reading the table.
Party-wise ledgerLedger Summary: A statement rearranged around who the money moved between rather than the order it happened in, showing each counterparty’s transaction count, total debits, total credits and net position. It answers questions a date-ordered statement cannot, such as total dealings with one party across a year. The party-wise ledger

Most of this is work you should not be doing by hand

Greenote reads the statement, pulls the counterparty out of the narration, works out the direction from the running balance, and posts the vouchers to your Tally. On your own PC.

Start free trial Check out features