Tally ERP 9 is a complete accounting solution in itself. The GST compliant solution includes modules for inventory, sales, and purchase. Accountants will like its features such as multi-currency support, GST compliance, and support for various taxes. One can manage banking transactions and even handle payroll from within the accounting solution. If a business has manufacturing divisions then it is possible to manage the bill of material, maintain journals and manage jobs. Managers can use it to set budget and track variance and derive forecasting ability. Given all its features, Tally does generate a hefty amount of data over time. While its internal features can analyze data and present reports, businesses will find it more convenient to port such data into their bigger database with more sophisticated features to handle it. The question is how to integrate Tally data with another database. This is possible through Tally customization. 

Tally Can Import And Export Data

Tally is ODBC compliant and this feature permits it to import data from other database formats such as SQL/MySQL, Oracle, and Excel as well as Access. The dynamic nature of ODBC means that changes are automatically updated. It is easy to extract data from Tally and port it to an external database or import external data into Tally ERP 9. Data can be imported and exported in XML, SDF, and ASCII though XML is the preferred format. Exporting is relatively easy but if you wish to import data then a little bit of custom scripting would be involved for which you can call in Tally ERP 9 customization experts. Besides, one would also need to set up ODBC connections in the Windows control panel to set up connections to excel, dBase, Access, SQL or Oracle as the case may be. It may be necessary to opt for Tally invoice customization and customize various fields such as quantity, weight, rate, tax, unit, pack and so on to sync with other fields in Excel, for example.  Not all Tally users are familiar with setting up ODBC connections and engaging an expert to set this up and normalize data exchange does help. 

Tally and Excel Data

Some users find Excel to be easy to use and for them, the exchange of data between Tally and Excel facilitates better working. This procedure is relatively simple. You can simply follow these steps: 

• Load Tally and open the company and then specify the period for which you want to load data. This done, you open a new Excel worksheet and then select data. 
• Specify data from external data sources and select the new database queries after which you choose the data source. 
• Tally links to the data source and you can see the wizard query screen from which you select columns you wish to include in your query. 
• Switch to excel and you can view all the selected columns. 

You would need to do this manually every time you wish to work on Tally data in Excel. 

Tally Data and Inventory

Some businesses may be using Tally for accounting and a separate package for inventory management. In this use case, it is possible to port Tally data to the inventory solution through Tally XML or Tally ODBC. Tally inventory also includes purchase and sales. If a purchase bill is entered it enhances the inventory level and when a sales bill is issued the quantity is deducted from the inventory. There is a solution to connect data in Tally with inventory management package through a database driver layer. With proper Tally customization and ODBC setup, it is possible for external DBMS to connect to Tally and retrieve data in which case Tally functions like a server. In the same way Tally can pull data from external DBMS. This setup is somewhat complicated and needs the proper configuration of ODBC client, ODBC driver, ODBC server and a middle application layer through API integration into the inventory management solution. This is best left to Tally customization experts. They will examine your setup, your needs of data exchange, the DBMS and related application and write a script to connect the two. 

Then there are times when an external inventory package may be the first point of data collection such as through barcode scanners for incoming inventory. This data may need to be ported to Tally ERP 9, which is possible with proper setup of collection definition. The Tally customization expert sets up a connection through DSN of the external application or by specifying the path. 

Tally and XML

ODBC is one way to connect databases and XML is another. Tally ERP 9 has inbuilt XML import and export facility and offers functionalities of the .NET framework. Some users may prefer the HTTP-XML method for data exchange. The environment needs to be capable of XML over HTTP 2.1 to establish connections. Tally customization experts usually rely on Visual Basic integration to allow the use of Tally as front end. Tally then sends the request in the form of XML and receives XML data. Such gathered XML data is converted to TDL objected and can be used in reports. 

DLLs and Tally Data

Tally developers may find that using DLLs for Tally plugins work better in some cases and their task does become easy due to the Tally developer 9 platform that provides source code and DLLs to create a data exchange facility. 

Expert Integration

Small businesses that use just one instance of Tally ERP 9 or a couple will need the services of Tally custom developers. In the case of enterprise operations then it becomes even more necessary since they will have several instances of Tally and data must be exchanged between such instances as well as from various other applications. They may need online data transfers and exchanges or prefer offline mode. In the case of the former, the XML mode works better while for offline modes you may find ODBC integration a better way. Get an expert today in Tally ERP 9 customization if you have such a scenario and you can derive much better business intelligence. Smart Sight Innovations offers sophisticated Tally customization for integration and exchange of Tally data with other databases.