How to share a Tally ledger with your customer
Every credit customer eventually asks the same two questions: what do I owe, and what is it made of? The answer already exists in TallyPrime. Getting it out of Tally and into their hands is the part that costs you time.
There are three ways to do it. They differ less in what the customer sees than in who does the work, and whether it stays done.
1. Export the ledger from TallyPrime by hand
In TallyPrime: Gateway of Tally → Display More Reports → Account Books → Ledger, pick the party, set the period, then press Alt+E to export as PDF or Excel.
Two to four minutes per request, and it has to be someone who can get to the Tally machine. That is fine at five credit customers. At fifty it becomes a job someone does every morning.
2. Email or WhatsApp the PDF
TallyPrime can email a ledger directly with Alt+M once SMTP is configured. In practice most businesses export the PDF and forward it on WhatsApp, because that is where the customer already is.
The export work is unchanged — you have just added a forward. And the file lands in a chat thread that scrolls away, so the same customer asks again next month. When a figure is questioned, the argument is about which PDF is the current one.
3. Give the customer their own login
The customer opens a portal on their phone, signs in with their phone number, and sees their balance and full statement drawn from your Tally data. They can download a statement for any period themselves.
There is a one-time setup: a connector runs on the machine where Tally already runs, and syncs to the portal. After that, answering "what do I owe" costs you nothing, and it keeps costing nothing as you add customers.
The three side by side
| Manual export | WhatsApp PDF | Customer portal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | You, per request | You, per request | Nobody |
| Customer waits | Hours to days | Hours | No wait |
| Always current | Only when sent | Only when sent | Yes |
| If a figure is disputed | Whose PDF is newer? | Whose PDF is newer? | One shared record |
| Still works at 50 customers | No | No | Yes |
One thing to check before you pick a tool
Several apps described as "Tally apps" do not read your Tally at all — they ask you to re-enter customers and transactions into a fresh ledger of their own. From that day you maintain two books, and they drift apart. The number your customer sees stops matching the number your accountant works from.
Ask whichever tool you are considering one question: does it read from my Tally, and does it ever write back? Northvane reads read-only and never writes to your books. TallyPrime stays the master record, exactly as it is today.
What Northvane does
Northvane connects to your TallyPrime and gives every credit customer a login to their own balance and statement — while you get one screen showing every outstanding ledger. Your Tally is never modified.