What Tallyfor can import

Tallyfor imports an Excel trial balance in any of these shapes:

Two-column — separate Debit and Credit columns.
Single-column — one Balance column, with negatives shown either with a minus sign or in parentheses.
Sectioned — the QuickBooks style, where the account type appears once as a section heading row (ASSETS, LIABILITIES, EQUITY, REVENUE, EXPENSES) and the individual account rows leave the type cell blank.

If you'd rather start from a known-good file, use the Example Excel File as a template.

Preparing your file

If you are using account codes, every account needs a unique account code. Codes are assigned automatically if the column is empty. If two accounts share a code, the import is blocked — see When an import fails below.
Account names are required. Every real account row must have a name; this is how Tallyfor tells account rows apart from section headings.
An "As of" date is required in cell A3, written as As of December 31, 2025. The words "As of" are required.
Header through row 5. Data begins on row 6.
Name the sheet tab Trial Balance or Sheet1.
A total row is optional. Tallyfor detects one if it's there. We recommend including one so you can confirm the file balances before import.
Nothing below the total row. Leave the cells beneath it empty.
Accounts with a zero balance are not imported. The rest of the file imports normally.

Account types

You do not have to supply an account type. If it's missing, accounts import as Unassigned and Tallyfor assigns the right type when you set the tax category.

If you do supply account types, Tallyfor now recognizes them however your accounting system writes them. Case, punctuation, singular or plural, and common qualifiers no longer matter, so all of the following land correctly:

What your file says	How Tallyfor reads it
ASSET, Assets, Current Asset, Other Current Assets, Fixed Assets, Bank, Accounts Receivable	Assets
LIABILITY, Liabilities, Current Liabilities, Long-Term Liabilities, Credit Card, Accounts Payable	Liabilities
Equity, EQUITY	Equity
Income, Revenue, Other Income	Revenue
Expense, Expenses, Cost of Goods Sold, Other Expense	Expenses

Anything Tallyfor genuinely can't place still imports as Unknown, and the banner on the trial balance tells you which accounts need attention.

Sectioned trial balances

If your export puts the account type in section heading rows rather than on each account row — which is how QuickBooks writes a trial balance — Tallyfor now reads those headings and applies them to the accounts underneath.

You don't need to map the Account Type column at all. Tallyfor finds the section column itself, drops the heading rows, and carries each heading down to the accounts that follow it.

Files that already carry a type on every row are unaffected.

Single-column trial balances

If your file has one Balance column instead of separate Debit and Credit columns, choose Single Column in the mapping window.

Tallyfor reads the amounts — including parenthesized negatives such as (9,500.00) — and splits them into debits and credits using each account's type. Where the type isn't available, it falls back to the sign of the amount.

Mapping your columns

Each field in the mapping window now has three states:

-- Select -- — you haven't chosen yet.
None — my file doesn't have this — an explicit statement that the column doesn't exist. Offered on optional fields only.
A column from your file.

Telling Tallyfor a column is absent is different from not having answered yet, and the importer now treats the two differently.

Import All and Apply Mapping stay disabled until the mapping is complete — and when they're disabled they now say what's missing, and point you at Identify where relevant.

When an import fails

Errors now appear inside the import window. Previously the error banner could render behind the import modal, so an import that failed looked like an import that did nothing. Failure messages are now shown in the window itself, wrapped, with a copy button so you can send them to support.

Duplicate account codes block the import, by design. Tallyfor never merges two accounts and never guesses which one to keep. The message names the code and both account names so you can fix the file. If your file is an AppFolio-style export where the real code sits inside the account name, see Trial balances with the account code inside the account name — that case is handled automatically.

Switching client clears the previous file. If an import fails and you move to a different client, the parsed workbook is discarded.

Troubleshooting summary

Start from the template. Example Excel File
Header through row 5, data from row 6.
"As of" date in cell A3.
Sheet tab named Sheet1 or Trial Balance.
Refresh the browser before re-importing a file you've just edited.
No data below the total row.
No bare numbers in the Account column. Prefix with an apostrophe in Excel if a number is unavoidable.
No duplicate account codes.
Zero-balance accounts are skipped.
Read the error in the import window — it now names the specific problem.

If you have an Excel report from an accounting product you use regularly, send us a sample at [email protected] and we'll look at building a native importer for it. If a file still won't import, send it over and we'll troubleshoot it for you.

Importing an Excel Trial Balance

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