Bank Statement to Tally (Vouchers with Ledger Rules)

About the Bank Statement to Tally (Vouchers with Ledger Rules)

Posting every line of a bank statement into Tally is the most repetitive part of bookkeeping. This tool reads the statement — a PDF (password-protected ones open with the password you type) or the Excel or CSV download from your bank — and gives each line a ledger with your rules: narration contains “SWIGGY” → Staff Welfare, UPI ID zomato@hdfcbank → Business Promotion, the last digits of an account number or a fixed rent amount → the landlord. Withdrawals become Payment vouchers, deposits Receipt vouchers, and lines to cash or another of your bank accounts Contra vouchers, on the bank ledger you name.

Lines without a rule go to a suspense ledger (or the ledger you type in the table), lines downloaded before are flagged as duplicates, and only the dates you choose are included. Once the result is unlocked, you download the Tally import XML (vouchers, plus a file with the ledgers that are new) and an Excel review sheet. Rules, the bank ledger and ledger groups are saved per client in your browser, so next month’s statement is a few clicks. The statement is read on your device: nothing is uploaded, and no PDF is ever made from it.

Common uses

• A CA office posting clients’ monthly bank statements with a rule set per client.
• A small business clearing UPI, card and NEFT lines into expense and party ledgers every month.
• Catching up on a year of bank entries before closing the books.

How rules work

Rules are tried from the top; the first one that fits a line gives its ledger, so put specific rules (one supplier) above general ones (all charges). A rule can look for text anywhere in the narration (spaces and punctuation do not matter: “SHARMA TRADERS” finds “SHARMA TRADERS/INV”), text at its start, a UPI ID, the last digits of an account number (in the narration or the reference), an exact amount, or a regular expression. It can apply to withdrawals, deposits or both. A rule whose ledger is a cash or bank account — or with “Transfer” ticked — makes a Contra voucher. Typing a ledger in the table overrides the rules for that line only. Each line shows which rule gave its ledger, and each rule how many lines it matched.

Duplicates

Every time you download the vouchers, the lines in them are remembered in this browser for the client and bank ledger: their date, direction, amount and narration. When a statement opened later contains the same line it is marked “Exported before” and left out (you can keep such lines). Downloading again in the same visit, after you change a rule or a ledger, gives the whole file again: import only the newest one. You can also load a Tally XML file — a vouchers file made here, or the Day Book exported from Tally as XML (Data Interchange) — and lines with the same date, amount and direction as a voucher on the bank ledger are marked as possible duplicates for you to check. Tally itself has no way to know a voucher was imported before: importing a file twice creates the vouchers twice.

Reading the statement

PDFs are read by the same engine as Bank Statement PDF to Excel: it finds the table from its column headings, joins narrations that wrap over several lines, reads Indian, US and European number formats and checks every running balance (lines that do not add up are reported). Scanned statements have no text: make them searchable with OCR PDF first, or use your bank’s Excel or CSV download. For spreadsheets, the date, narration, reference, withdrawal, deposit (or amount with Dr/Cr) and balance columns are matched from the headings and can be changed.

The files

The vouchers file holds Payment, Receipt and Contra vouchers in accounting voucher view on the bank ledger, dated as on the statement, with the statement’s narration and reference. The ledgers file holds the ledgers that are new — without the company’s ledger list, all of them, to import with “Ignore duplicates”. Both follow the import layout Tally Solutions documents (sample XML, importing XML into TallyPrime) and work in TallyPrime and Tally.ERP 9. The review workbook lists every line with its ledger, the rule that gave it and whether it is in the file, plus the rules and the ledgers.

Limitations

• Scanned (image) PDFs cannot be read without OCR, and statements with several accounts in one file are read as one table.
• Bank details of each voucher in Tally (instrument number and transaction type) are not filled in; the reference is kept in the narration.
• Charges with GST in them are posted to one ledger as they appear on the statement; split the GST yourself if you claim it.
• Payments are not matched against invoices (no bill-wise allocation); adjust bills in Tally if you track them bill by bill.
• Rules, groups and the remembered lines stay in this browser; export the clients to move them to another device.
• Every company is set up differently: import into a backup first and check the Day Book. An aid for bookkeeping, not accounting advice.

Privacy

The statement is opened and read in this browser and never uploaded; its password is used only to open it and is never stored. Rules, settings and fingerprints of downloaded lines (date, amount and a short hash of the narration) are kept in this browser’s local storage for each saved client until you delete them.