How to Use Edit Log in TallyPrime - All You Need to Know (2024)

Edit Log inTallyPrimeallows you to keep a trail of each activity performed in transactions and masters to help you have a better internal control over your Company data. Irrespective of the nature of changes made in the data – financial, functional, or internal, the Edit Log feature keeps a trail of the activities in Company data.

Edit Log enables:

• Regular monitoring of the actions such as creation, alteration, and deletion in transactions and masters in your Company data.
• Simplicity in auditing your account books.
• A practice of making well-informed decisions in terms of working with Company data.

The Edit Log feature is introduced inTallyPrime Edit LogRelease 2.1 andTallyPrimeRelease 2.1.

Audit trail is intended to ensure that all the activities related to your transactions and masters are logged and available for viewing, according to MCA notification for businesses. Considering this aspect, the Edit Log feature in TallyPrime has been designed with the necessary controls in place, by default, to eliminate any scope of tampering the trail of your transactions.

Edit Log is a view-only (display) report that maintains track of all activities with your vouchers and masters, like creation, alteration, deletion and so on, without the need for any additional controls to restrict the access.The design principle applied in building the Edit Log feature makes the log of your data more reliable, secure, and completely tamper-proof, in compliance with the MCA requirements. This means, at any given point a user can ONLY view the Edit Log report to understand the trail of activities.

The underlying design principle of Edit Log enables you to view the logs and compare with its previous version, thereby providing more specific insights on the updates done to the vouchers and masters. Additionally, if a user attempts to open the Edit Log using a TallyPrime non-Edit Log version, a log gets created keeping a track of this activity. This helps auditors to check if any user had opened the Edit Log in any other non-Edit Log version of TallyPrime. Such inbuilt controls designed in TallyPrime makes the Edit Log data much more reliable and tamper-proof.

Moreover, if you would not want any user to view or create Edit Log as per your business need or policy, TallyPrime already has the robust and powerful Security feature at the company level to restrict creation or alteration of vouchers, as needed.

Tally products with Edit Log

With Release 2.1, we are giving you the flexibility to choose between the following products:

• TallyPrime Edit Log:If your business needs to track all activities for a better internal control, or statutory requirements such asAudit Trail, mandated by Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), India, then you will need this product. Edit Log cannot be disabled in this product.
• TallyPrime: If you want to maintain trails for internal audit purposes or view logs intermittently, then you can leverage the Edit Log feature in your day-to-day business operations.
  By default,TallyPrimedoes not track activities in your transactions and masters.You can enable or disable Edit Log, when needed.

TallyPrime Edit LogandTallyPrimehave the same set of features to run your business, including Edit Log. However, onlyTallyPrime Edit Logmeets theAudit Trail compliance requirements.

If you want to continue usingTallyPrime, then you can upgrade to the latest release. To know how to do it, refer toUpdate aTallyPrimeRelease.

If you want to useTallyPrime Edit Log, then you can upgrade your existingTallyPrimeor Tally.ERP 9 application. Alternatively, you can install TallyPrime Edit Log in a separate folder.

You can useTallyPrime Edit Logwith either your existingTallyPrimelicense or a new license.

You can downloadTallyPrime Edit Logfrom theTally Solutions website.To know how to installTallyPrime Edit Log, refer to Install TallyPrime Edit Log.

If you are a new user, activate your license after installingTallyPrime. If you are upgrading from an earlier version ofTallyPrime, yourTallyPrime Edit Logwill start in licensed mode. To know more, refer toLicense Activation | Reactivation | Surrender | Update.

If you are usingTallyPrimeorTally.ERP 9, then you will need to migrate data toTallyPrime Edit Log.To know more, refer toMigrate Data to TallyPrime Edit Log.

It is also important to note that in TallyPrime with Edit Log, there will be a marginal increase in the size of data. This is because the product will keep a log of all the transactions, ledgers, stock items, and groups for each activity performed. Moreover, all the logs will have a complete copy of all the versions of the transaction or master, irrespective of the magnitude of the change made in the transaction or master.

Edit Log forTransactions and Masters

The facility of Edit Log to track all the activities such as creation, alteration, and deletion is provided for all transactions that you enter in TallyPrime, irrespective of the type of voucher. To know how to view Edit Log for transactions, refer totheView Edit Log for Transactionssection in theAccounting Entry in TallyPrimetopic.

Edit Log is provided for three masters: Ledgers, Stock Items, and Groups, as the activities such as creation, alteration, and deletion in these masters can change the financial reports in your Company data.Toknow more about the Edit Log for each master, referto:

• View Edit Log for Ledgerssection in theLedgers in TallyPrimetopic.
• View Edit Log for Stock Itemssection in theManage Your Stock Itemstopic.
• View Edit Log for Groupssection in theGroups in TallyPrimetopic.

Edit Log report fortransactions and masters

The Edit Log report for transactions and masters provide you with an idea of the nature of activity that was performed by a particular user at a specific time. This helps you monitor the activities and have a better internal control over your Company data.

The Edit Log reports for transactions and masters are similar, and a sample report is shownbelow.

Activities in Edit Log report for transactions and masters

If the Security Control is not enabled in your Company, then the activities will be logged with username as Unknown (Security not enabled).

Differences Between Edit Log Versions

When you drill down on a version in the Edit Log report for any transaction or master, you can view the differences between the selected version and the immediate previous version.

The values in the reports are organised based on the fields and their hierarchy.

The field values that have changes between the versions are marked in red, regardless of the users changing the values or internal changes.

Keys for specific actions in the report

A few special cases of the diff report

Activity: Created

The version on the left-hand side is empty and no field value is shown in red.

Activity: Deleted

The version on the right-hand side is empty and no field value is shown in red.

Activity: Resaved (No changes)

Other cases in Differences Between Edit Log Versions report

Edit Log and Best Practices

When using TallyPrime with the Edit Log feature, you might be using third-party integrations or TDLs that allows import of third-party data into your company. In addition, depending on your day-to-day transactions, you might need to insert or delete vouchers in your company data.

If your Voucher Type is configured for renumbering on insertion of new vouchers in between the existing vouchers or deletion of vouchers, all the subsequent vouchers get renumbered automatically. This leads to creation of Edit Log for each voucher that gets renumbered. Therefore, there might be a significant increase in the overall data size due to the Edit Log data. In such cases, we recommend the following:

For TallyPrime 2.1 with Edit Log or TallyPrime Edit Log 2.1: If you have set the voucher numbering method to Automatic, it is recommended to alter it as Automatic (Manual Override).

For TallyPrime 3.0 with Edit Log or TallyPrime Edit Log 3.0: If you have already migrated your data from Release 2.1 (with the numbering method set to Automatic) to TallyPrime Release 3.0, the numbering method is by default set to Automatic > Retain Original Voucher No. Continue to use the same numbering method for vouchers, to avoid renumbering of vouchers that can lead to edit log creation for all subsequent vouchers on insertion or deletion of a voucher.

Avoid making frequent changes to your masters and vouchers once they are created. Each time you alter your data, edit log data is created for each alteration, thereby increasing the over all data size.

Ensure that the vouchers to be imported have the appropriate voucher numbers, as expected, to avoid creation of any unwanted edit log data.

Edit Log for Company

The Edit Log report under Company consists of all the activities in the Company data that may affect the existing Edit Logs for transactions and masters. This report is not to view the changes made on the Company screen.

Activities Affecting Edit Log report

The report is similar in TallyPrime and TallyPrime Edit Log. However, the list of activities will have minor differences.

To view the Activities Affecting Edit Log report:

• PressAlt+K(Company) >Edit Logand pressEnter.

A sample report in TallyPrime appears as shown below.

Activities captured in the report

If the Security Control is not enabled in your Company, then the activities will be logged with username as Unknown (Security not enabled).