Read a TallyPrime Day Book export as the month’s sales, send the checked sales and purchases back as import files, and why every ledger name is yours.
What Tally already has that the return needs
A TallyPrime company already holds the month as vouchers, each with its party, place of supply, HSN, rate and tax ledgers. Export the Day Book with Alt+E as XML and drop it on the prepare screen or the firm’s upload link. The Day Book is the export fynxIQ has read from TallyPrime 7.1; a Sales Register export has not been tried. Every check runs on it, and each line of the return is traced to its voucher by number and GUID.
The file is recognised from its contents, never its name, whether it is UTF-16 as Tally writes it or UTF-8. Only vouchers under this return’s GSTIN are taken, and the others are counted and named; a file in which every voucher belongs to another registration is refused whole, because a return built from the wrong company balances perfectly and is wrong.
How a voucher becomes a line of the return
A voucher’s type is read from the words in the name the firm gave it: sales or invoice, credit note or sales return, debit note, purchase and the rest. A type whose name fits none of these is left out and named with its taxable value; rename it in Tally and export again. A debit note, which can be a supplementary invoice or a purchase return, is placed by its ledger: one to a ledger the file’s sales vouchers or credit notes post to is on the sales side, one to a purchase ledger is counted as the other side of the books, and one to neither is left out and named.
An entry with no rate and no tax head, such as round-off or freight, is left out and named with its amount. A voucher with no place of supply holds the return: the place decides whether the supply carries integrated tax or central and state tax (sections 7 and 8 of the IGST Act, 2017), so it is never guessed. Tax under a head the place does not allow is a warning, and the return carries the head the place fixes.
Table 13 asks about gaps, because you numbered these documents
Since the May 2025 return period the portal refuses a return that reports supplies with a blank document summary (GSTN advisory of 2 May 2025), and rule 46(b) of the CGST Rules, 2017 gives each tax invoice a consecutive serial number, unique for the financial year. So Table 13 is built from the numbers in hand.
A number missing from a marketplace’s series is not asked about, because the marketplace numbers the invoices it raises in your name and its file carries only the month; Table 13 counts it as cancelled. Tally vouchers were numbered by you, so each missing number is asked about, and the GSTR-1 JSON stays held until each is answered cancelled, which Table 13 then declares, or has its file added. A voucher Tally marks cancelled is declared cancelled without a question.
A voucher dated in an earlier month is asked about too: declare it late, as section 37(3) of the CGST Act allows until 30 November after the end of its financial year or the annual return for it, whichever is earlier, or leave it out because its own month’s return carries it.
The way back: sales as Tally’s import file
The reconciled month goes back as two Tally import files, ledgers first. The ledgers file creates each voucher type and ledger the vouchers post to that the company does not already have: a master you tick as Already in this Tally company is left out, and Tally’s own Sales, Credit Note and Debit Note types are never written. The vouchers file carries one voucher per invoice, credit note or debit note to a registered buyer, with the buyer’s GSTIN and the tax by head; one per inter-state consumer invoice above the B2CL limit, since those are reported one by one in Table 5; and for the rest of a marketplace’s consumer sales, one summary per marketplace per state. Exports, and supplies to SEZ units with a GSTIN, go invoice by invoice to sales ledgers of their own, an export with its port code and shipping bill when the source gives them.
TallyPrime counts an inter-state consumer sales summary above the limit, ₹1,00,000 for supplies from 1 August 2024 (Notification 12/2024-Central Tax), as one large invoice in Table 5. So such a summary goes as parts made of whole invoices, none above the limit unless one invoice is; the screen names any part Tally will still count as large. A summary of consumer returns is not split.
These files were imported into TallyPrime 7.1 and read back through its Day Book and GSTR-1. In Tally, in this order:
- Open the company the month belongs to. The file names one only if you gave it on the screen, and Tally imports into whichever company is open.
- In its GST registration (Alter, GST Registration, More Details, History), the Applicable from date must be on or before the month, or the vouchers import without a word and sit in Tally’s GSTR-1 under Not Relevant. Set its LUT/Bond Details there too: Tally reads an export or SEZ supply under LUT from them, never from the voucher.
- Import, Masters, the ledgers file, with Behaviour of import if master already exists set to Ignore Duplicates. The other settings rewrite a ledger you already have.
- Import, Transactions, the vouchers file. A voucher imported before its ledger is held as an exception; import the file again.
- In Tally’s GSTR-1, open Uncertain Transactions, then HSN/SAC Details are overridden in transaction, select the registered buyers’ vouchers and choose Accept As Is, after every import.
- A second import alters the month’s vouchers by GUID and never doubles or removes them. To take vouchers out, import the removal file as transactions, and tell the screen once Tally’s log shows them deleted.
Ledger names are yours, once, and kept
A wrong ledger name in an import creates a stray master, fails, or misposts without a word, so no name is invented: every ledger and voucher type the month needs is listed with a suggestion, and nothing is exported against it until a person has typed or accepted a name and kept it. The names are kept on the server for the registration, each against what it names (a rate, a tax head, a buyer’s or supplier’s GSTIN, a marketplace), with your Already in this Tally company ticks and the company’s name. The vouchers are built in the browser, and no file goes to the server. Next month only something new asks again: a customer, a supplier, a marketplace, a rate, a tax head or a kind of document.
A voucher whose names are not all kept is held back whole and counted. On each side of the books, a name given to two things that cannot be one master, a sales ledger and a tax ledger say, is refused, and neither file can be downloaded until each has a name of its own. Sales and purchase names are not checked against each other, so give purchase ledgers names no sales ledger uses. When a vouchers file is downloaded, the server records its GUIDs, numbers, dates and voucher types, and no amount or party, so that a removal file takes back exactly those vouchers and none of the other side’s. The File it step gives both files beside the portal’s JSON, and each can also be taken from the Tally export tab of Your return.
Purchases back to Tally, and what is not yet proven
The Purchases page sends one Purchase voucher per bill in the books, with the supplier’s bill number as the reference, or that number with the last four characters of the supplier’s GSTIN added when two suppliers’ bills share it; the narration keeps the number as the supplier wrote it. A supplier’s credit note goes as a Debit Note. Purchase ledgers are by rate, taken from the bill’s tax when that is a legal rate within rounding; otherwise the bill goes to a ledger with no rate and is named. Bills only the GSTR-2B has go when you tick the box for them, or when there are no books.
Held and named rather than sent: a bill under reverse charge, because the tax is yours to pay in cash and then claim (section 9(3) of the CGST Act); a bill of entry; a supplier’s debit note; a bill with no date; a supplier whose state Tally has no name for. A bill the GSTR-2B marks ITC not available (rule 60(7) of the CGST Rules) goes as the books have it and is named: in GSTR-3B that credit is never claimed in Table 4(A) and is shown in Table 4(D)(2) (Circular 170/02/2022-GST), so it is the entry in Tally that needs correcting, not the return.
The purchase files have not yet been imported into a TallyPrime company, and the screen says so. The first time, on both sides, import into a copy of your company and read its Day Book before you trust the books. Only TallyPrime 7.1 in Educational mode was tested; a licensed release, or a company with years of masters, may differ.
What this is not
fynxIQ does not connect to Tally, keep books or file. It reads what Tally exports, writes what Tally imports, and changes no figure in your books. A blocked GSTR-1 does not hold back the Tally files or the GSTR-3B draft, and a voucher waiting on a name holds only itself.
In the app, on every plan, the free one included: Tally, both ways.
Which file to download, and from where: the list for each marketplace and the GST portal.
By Raunak Pathak, founder of fynxIQ, who files GST returns on it. Last updated 23 September 2026. This is general information about how GST returns work, not advice about your particular return.