The books
Every closed day is posted, two-sided, into a ledger you can read as a journal, a trial balance, a P&L and a balance sheet — and hand to Tally.
Reports → B5 · Financial and ledger carries the books. Nothing is typed into them by the desk: when the night audit closes a day, that day's charges, taxes, collections, restaurant bills and credit notes are posted as one balanced journal, and the folios and the books agree to the rupee.
Night audit journal is one closed day, line by line: the guest ledger and the city ledger on one side, revenue by head, output GST by rate and each tender on the other. The last rows check the books against the open bills — *agrees* is what you want to see.
General ledger is every line of a period, account by account, with a running balance. Journals lists the period's journals — the night's, any posted by hand, and any reversal.
Trial balance is the period: opening balance, the period's debits and credits, and the closing balance on each account. Profit & loss is revenue by department the way a hotel reads it (rooms, food & beverage, banquets, other), then expenses, then the result. Balance sheet is as at a date.
Chart of accounts is the list itself. Rename an account, change its Tally name or Tally group, or retire one; the night's journal still finds the right account because it goes by the account's *role*, not its name.
A day that changes after it closed — a void, a credit note, a late restaurant bill — is not edited in the book. The old journal is reversed and the day is posted again, and both stay visible. Locking a month (an administrator, a manager or back office) stops anything landing in it; a correction to a locked month lands on the open date and says so.
Tally. *Tally masters* is a one-time file of the ledgers with their Tally groups; *Tally vouchers* is the period's journals. Import both in TallyPrime (Gateway of Tally → Import → Masters, then Vouchers). Importing the same period twice alters rather than duplicates.
Not in the books yet: vendor bills and other expenses (post them by hand for now), bank reconciliation, e-invoicing.