Tally

How to export the outstanding receivables report from Tally

The exact keystrokes for Tally Prime and Tally.ERP 9 — including the two settings most people miss, which are the reason the export comes out useless.

Step 1 — Check bill-wise details is on

Do this first. Without it Tally only knows that a customer owes you ₹4 lakh — not which invoices make it up, when they were raised, or when they were due. The export will be almost worthless for chasing payments.

1. Press F11 (Features)
2. Accounting Features → Maintain bill-wise details → Yes
3. Accept

Step 2 — Open the receivables report

Tally Prime:

1. Gateway of Tally
2. Display More Reports
3. Statements of Accounts
4. Outstandings
5. Receivables

Tally.ERP 9: Gateway → Display → Statements of Accounts → Outstandings → Receivables. Same place, one less menu.

Step 3 — Switch to detailed view

Press Alt+F1.

The summary view shows one line per customer. Detailed view shows every individual invoice underneath each customer — that's what you want. In detailed view the customer name appears once as a heading and the invoice rows sit beneath it.

Step 4 — Set the period wide

Press Alt+F2 and set the from-date to the start of last financial year. Overdue invoices are, by definition, old — a narrow period silently hides your worst ones, which are the ones that matter most.

Step 5 — Export

1. Tally Prime: Ctrl+E  ·  ERP 9: Alt+E
2. Format: Excel (works best). CSV is fine too.
3. Note the folder it saves to — Tally defaults to its own install folder, which is rarely where you expect.
4. Accept

Step 6 — Also export Bills Cleared

This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the one that changes what the data can tell you.

The outstanding report says what's unpaid today. Bills Cleared says how long each customer has historically taken to pay. With both, you can tell the difference between a customer who is genuinely late and one who always pays on day 74 and is simply on schedule.

From the same Outstandings menu, choose Bills Cleared (or Ledger Outstandings → select the ledger → F6 for settled bills), set a 12-month period, and export the same way.

Common problems

"Party's name column is blank on most rows"

That's normal in detailed view — Tally prints the name once as a group heading and leaves it blank on the invoice rows beneath. Any tool reading the file needs to carry that name down. If you're opening it in Excel yourself, fill it down before doing anything else.

"The file opens as a web page, not a spreadsheet"

Tally sometimes exports HTML with an .xls extension. Excel will open it and complain about the format — click Yes. The data is intact.

"Amounts show as text with Dr / Cr"

Also normal. Dr means the customer owes you. Cr means you owe them, usually an advance received or a credit note. Strip the suffix before summing.

"I exported Ageing Analysis instead"

Ageing Analysis gives one row per customer with amounts split across 0–30 / 31–60 / 61–90 buckets. There are no invoice numbers or due dates in it, so you can't chase anything specific. Go back and choose Receivables.

What the export gives you

You now have every unpaid invoice with its date, due date and amount — and, if you did step 6, how each customer actually behaves. That's enough to answer the questions that matter: who to chase first, who to leave alone, and which invoices are stuck for a reason rather than merely late.

Next: Connect Tally automatically so you don't have to do this by hand every time · Reading Bills Receivable · How to reduce DSO · Spotting a disputed invoice

Next: Payment reminder message formats that actually get replies · How to reduce DSO