Every feature mapped to a real CA-firm workflow.
See every client's GST status, pending returns, ITC mismatches, and outstanding balances on one screen. Switch between client books with one click — no re-login, no separate licenses.
Add articled clerks with data-entry-only access. Partners review and approve. Every action logged with timestamp + user + before-and-after values. ICAI audit-trail-ready.
GSTR-1 on the 11th of every month, across 25 clients, in a single afternoon. The bulk filing dashboard validates all returns first, then files in sequence with status tracking.
Import client Tally .xml or .tally backups directly. Ledgers, parties, items, opening balances, and 3 years of vouchers come over in one step. Most migrations take under 10 minutes.
P&L, balance sheet, trial balance, cash flow, ledgers, and ageing reports for every client. Export as PDF or Excel. Schedule III–compliant formats for company clients.
Pro plan firms can white-label client-facing invoices, statements, and reports with the CA firm's logo and contact details. Useful for client communication.
The pain points every CA firm knows by heart.
One login, all clients, in your browser. Move from the office desktop to a client site to home in three minutes without losing context.
Bulk filing means the 11th and 20th become two-hour tasks, not two-day marathons. Articled clerks prepare, partners review, file in sequence.
The biggest blocker to moving clients to the cloud — historical data — is solved. .tally / .xml backup in, full books out, including 3 years of vouchers.
Every entry, edit, and approval is logged with user, timestamp, and full before-and-after values. Exportable as a CSV report for ICAI inspections or client audits.
ReadyBooks.ai's CA-firm workflow was designed with practising CAs from Jaipur, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kochi, and Hyderabad. The friction points that came up in every interview — re-logging into separate Tally machines, articled-clerk supervision, GSTR-1 filing on the 11th across 30 clients in two days, Tally migration nobody wants to attempt — drove the product roadmap.
The result is an accounting platform that maps to the way Indian CA firms actually work, not a US small-business product with a "multi-org" toggle bolted on. Multi-client is the default mode, not a paid add-on. Articled-clerk roles ship out of the box, not behind an enterprise SKU. Tally migration is a first-class import path, not a "we have a partner who can do that" referral.
The 11th of every month is GSTR-1 day. In a typical CA firm with 25 clients, the workflow runs like this in ReadyBooks.ai. By the 7th, your articled clerks have entered the previous month's sales for all clients. The system has flagged any invoices with missing HSN codes, invalid GSTINs, or place-of-supply mismatches — clerks have already fixed these. By the 9th, GSTR-1 drafts are auto-generated for every client and surface on the partner's dashboard with a "ready / needs review / blocked" status per client.
On the 11th the partner opens the bulk-filing dashboard, reviews the 25 client returns in sequence (each takes 1-2 minutes if the data is clean), approves them, and triggers bulk file via the GSTN API. The system files in parallel and returns the ARNs. Same workflow on the 20th for GSTR-3B. Total partner time on filing day: roughly 90 minutes for 25 clients.
Compare this with the Tally + GST offline utility + spreadsheet workflow that most Indian CA firms still run — 40 minutes per client return, plus the back-and-forth on Excel templates, plus the rejected-JSON retries. The math gets you to a 10x productivity gain on filing day.
Articled clerks (and increasingly junior CAs) do the bulk of data entry in Indian CA firms — recording invoices, capturing bank statements, reconciling petty cash, marking payments. The risk is twofold: (a) they accidentally edit a finalised entry, breaking the books retroactively, and (b) they see client P&L or GST details they shouldn't (confidentiality + maturity issues).
ReadyBooks.ai role-based access has four standard roles — Owner, Partner, Senior, and Clerk. The Clerk role can create and edit transactions in the current period only (no edits to closed periods), cannot view or export P&L, balance sheet, GST returns, or settings, and cannot delete anything. Every action is captured in an immutable audit log with timestamp, user, and full before-and-after values. Partners get a "pending review" queue of clerk actions, which lets them sample-check entries rather than reviewing every line.
Custom roles are available on the Pro plan for firms that want finer-grained permissions — for example, a "GST Junior" role that can prepare GSTR-1 but not file, or a "Bank Reconciliation" role that only sees the bank ledger.
The Tally migration importer reads two file types — .xml export (recommended for clean migration) and .tally backup (the binary company file). Both produce the same outcome: full chart of accounts (groups, ledgers), party masters (with GSTIN, contact details, opening balances), item masters (with HSN, GST rate, opening stock), and 3 years of historical vouchers (sales, purchases, payments, receipts, journals, debit notes, credit notes).
What does not migrate automatically: TDS deductee-wise breakup (limited Tally support), payroll history (different schema), and any custom Tally TDL extensions. These are typically handled at the start of the migration as a manual setup step — adding TDS sections, configuring payroll if applicable, and re-creating any custom reports.
For typical CA-firm clients (SMB trading or manufacturing, no custom TDL), the migration is a single 10-minute import. The system runs a balance-sheet match between Tally and ReadyBooks.ai post-import; if the balances tie, you are good. If not, the system highlights the specific ledger or voucher that diverged so you can fix it before going live.
Bulk GST filing dashboard cuts filing day to roughly 90 minutes. Articled clerks prepare; the CA reviews and approves; the system files. Remaining time freed up for advisory work that bills at a higher rate.
Clerk role can edit current-period entries only. Immutable audit log shows exactly which clerk made which change. Partner reviews pending changes from a single queue, not by digging through ledgers.
New client added to the multi-client dashboard in 5 minutes. Their Tally data (if any) imported in 10 minutes. Articled clerks are productive on day one because every client uses the same UI.