Introduction
Home Screen
When you open Tally-Prime, you can see a home screen with different items – a top menu bar with pull down options, the details of the Companies that are open, the Gateway of Tally menu, and a button bar on the right-hand side of the screen.
Top Menu has options to manage your Companies, Tally-Prime application, users in your Companies, and your data storage & sharing. This menu and child items in the menu are also accessible from any screen in Tally-Prime. Help menu has options to launch Tally Help and to upgrade your application to a newer release of the product. Availability of a newer release is indicated with a red dot notification on the menu name Help. Additionally, other options under the Help menu include What’s New, Tally Shop for buying add-ons, Troubleshooting to repair your application and data in case there are issues, Settings to configure your application, TDL & Add-On to manage your extensions/customization's , and an About report that shows the details of your Tally-Prime installation and its environment.
Shortcuts form an easy way to use Tally-Prime features. Shortcut/hotkey to access each option in the top menu is shown in bold capital letter that is underlined, or F1. When the shortcut has a single underline, you can just press Alt and the letter key to access the corresponding option. Shortcuts without underline work with the single key press. When you access any of the menu items, a list of options grouped under the menu item opens, and you can access each using the corresponding shortcut or mouse. For example, Alt+K > C will open Company Creation screen.
Go To option on the top menu helps you to quickly access any report or Tally-Prime features that you want to use. Any screen that you access using Go To will open on top of the current screen, and
closing the screen will take you back to the screen that was open earlier. You can use Alt+G to access Go To.
The option Switch To is placed with Go To as a toggle to help you move from the current screen to any other screen. You can use Ctrl+G to access Switch To.
More about Go To and Switch To are given below.
Company details are shown below the top menu, on the left side of the screen. The details include the CURRENT PERIOD and CURRENT DATE, the names of the Companies that are open, and the last date of transactions in each Company. Further, in case your Company is connected and is
accessible online, that is also shown here with (c).
Gateway of Tally groups the different Tally-Prime features, based on the nature of activities. Options on the main screen of Tally-Prime include Masters, Transactions, Utilities, a few Accounting and
Financial reports, and an option to view more reports. When you select any of these options, a screen opens that lets you create or alter a master or transaction, view a report, or list other options. Notice that every option in the Gateway of Tally has one bold capital letter, the shortcut to access the option. You can just press the letter key to access the corresponding item. For example, K is to open Day Book, and B for Balance Sheet.
Right Button Bar on the home screen of Tally-Prime has two buttons F2: Date and F3: Company. On pressing Alt key the options change to F2: Period and F3: Select Company. Pressing Ctrl+F3 keys show the option Shut Company. Alternatively, you can click the expand option, < next to each button to view the corresponding options. Options on the right button bar change based on the screen that is open as per the actions relevant to the screen or the transaction you are working on. However, the shortcuts associated with different options are consistent across masters, vouchers and reports. For example, F2 is always for date, Alt+F2 is for period, F10 in master screens is for Other Masters & voucher screens is for Other Vouchers, and Ctrl+B in reports is for Basis of Values.
More about Right Button Bar is given below.
Let us explore a little more about the buttons on the right button bar.
F2, F3, F12 options – remain constant on all screens, transactions, masters and reports.
F4 to F10 – each one has a preset but different action in transactions, masters, and reports.
Ctrl+B/H/J – has present actions only in reports.
Ctrl+F/H/I – has preset actions only in vouchers.
In a similar manner, there are predefined list of buttons for different actions. Check different buttons when you are on different screens to know these options better.