‘Tally' tale of Matsyafed

Matsyafed, the Kerala State Co-operative Federation for Fisheries Development federation, decided to adopt Tally software which has helped it manage all its financial and accounts operations in a systematic and error-free way

MatsyaFed, the Kerala State Co-operative Federation for Fisheries Development, was established in 1984 to promote the coastal fishery sector. The objective of the Federation is to ensure economic and social development of the fishermen community by improving their per capita income. The district-level welfare programmes headed by a Project Officer, promote production, procurement, processing and marketing of fish and its products. These programs include employment generation and women empowerment activities (at the grass root level).

Headquartered at Thiruvananthapuram, MatsyaFed has 10 district offices, 14 Commercial Houses and 12 Vyasa Stores which are primarily retail outlets. There are 666 Fishermen Development and Welfare Co-operative Societies in Marine, Inland and Women Fisheries sector affiliated to MatsyaFed.

SRS Infocomm, a Tally Partner, implemented Tally software across all the MatsyaFed offices in the state of Kerala and trained all their prime staff to commence operations on Tally.

Challenges faced

MatsyaFed depended on manual accounting procedures wherein the data was manually fed into in-house developed software which generated the financial reports that were required by the management in decision making.

E M Sidheeq, director of SRS Infocomm said, "Over the years, Matysafed was experiencing substantial growth in different spheres. Like any other government organisation, Matsyafed leaned on the age-old processes of manual bookkeeping. These processes were becoming increasingly cumbersome and unreliable for the organisation. Prior to the implementation of Tally, the accounts books were physically carried to the Matsyafed's head office and were manually fed into Excel. Thereafter, the reports were taken from the excel."

Manual compilation of the accounts not only took several months to consolidate the data from various branch offices but also resulted in additional costs to the company. Also, since data entry is prone to human error, the final data was found unreliable at various times. In addition to this, the software had several support issues, which needed continual attention, causing the company further expenditures. Unsatisfied with the outcome, the company sought out for a simple software that could address their operational requirements.

Sidheeq further elaborated, "The entire cycle took 3 to 6 months. Further data collection and consolidation from Matsyafed branches remained a concern. The entire consolidation process took around 1 to 1.5 months thus delaying the entire accounting process further. As a result, the annual accounting process used to end only by the month of September every year. Obviously, the count of manual errors was also very high. There were increased occurrences of data mismatches as well. The process was becoming a strain not only on the HR front but also meant financial loss for the organisation. Matsyafed felt the need to hire some additional resources to remove the backlog. They had to form a team called the "Reconsolidation team" comprising of around 5 to 10 members, who used to work for 3 months to consolidate the entire data coming from all branch offices. The lack of timely data consolidation also affected the decision making process of the organisation."

After reviewing various options, MatsyaFed decided to adopt Tally software to manage all of its Financial and Accounts operations.

Route Ahead

Sidheeq said, "For the accounting process to be faster and effective, we realised that apart from Matsyafed's head office they needed to reach out to the district offices as well. As Matysafed has 12 district offices and 10 to 12 "Vyasa Stores"- commercial stores selling the fishing equipment, hatcheries- prawn hatcheries, ornamental hatcheries and net factories, the implementation was planned in a phased manner. The process started with implementing Tally ERP9 in district offices. Then we implemented Tally in all Vyasa Stores and then at the hatcheries level. The entire implementation took some 3 to 4 years. Currently, they have approx. 42 licenses- out of that some 3 or 4 are multi users."

However, the toughest challenge was training data operators for 3 main reasons:

 Organisation experienced frequent exit of computer operators - Recruitment remained a concern hence planning training calendar was indeed challenging

 Data entry operators had minimal education

 Educating operators on the benefits of automated accounting - Required Partner initiatives to change the mind-set of resources by explaining them the benefits of automation.

Apart from installing Tally, the partner provided training and education to Matsyafed resources. SRS Infocomm ensured the availability of a full time support resource exclusively for Matsyafed who guided the employees on the features of Tally.ERP 9. Prior to the installation of Tally.ERP 9 , there was no synchronisation. Today consolidation happens within a month.

Solution deployed

The 680 member strong Federation has till date implemented Tally.ERP 9 at 42 offices across the state and all transactional information from these offices are consolidated at the Head Office through Tally Data Synchronisation. This has helped the management to have full visibility of operations across all offices.

Post deployment, all accounting procedures were handled by Tally.ERP 9 ending the need for manual record- keeping. This not only made the reports more reliable, but also raised the employee morale, creating a positive work environment. Today, Tally is used extensively not only to instantaneously generate basic financial reports like Receipts and Payments, P&L Statement, Balance Sheet, etc., but also MIS reports.

Encouraged by the benefits gained by the Tally.ERP 9 implementation, the Federation now plans to integrate financial and loan management operations into Tally. Sidheeq said, "MatysaFed is very happy with Tally and plans to expand the implementation. We will extend our full support to the Federation."