How to Record Purchase Vouchers and Invoices in Tally ERP.9

Every business that buys goods or services needs a reliable way to record what it owes and what it now owns. In Tally, that job belongs to the purchase voucher, activated with the F9 key. Whether a shop buys stationery for cash or a manufacturer buys raw material on 60 days’ credit, the same voucher captures the transaction, updates the ledgers, and (if GST is involved) tracks the tax credit you’re entitled to claim. This post walks through exactly how a purchase voucher works, the fields you need to fill, and the mistakes that trip up most beginners.

What a purchase voucher actually does 🔗

A voucher, in accounting terms, is a source document you use to record a transaction and update the relevant ledger accounts. Tally’s own documentation defines it exactly this way – a record that reflects the change in your company’s financial position, entered through the appropriate voucher type. The purchase voucher, specifically, is used every time your business acquires goods for resale, raw materials for production, or services like rent, internet, or professional fees.

It doesn’t matter whether the payment is immediate or deferred. The accounting principle behind a purchase entry is straightforward: you debit the purchase account (or an expense account, for services) and credit the supplier’s account if it’s on credit, or the cash/bank account if it’s an immediate cash purchase. This is exactly how Tally structures the entry when you open the purchase screen, as shown in Tally’s purchase entry guide.

Before you open the purchase voucher 🔗

Tally won’t stop you from entering a transaction, but a clean purchase voucher relies on a few things being set up first:

• Supplier ledger: Created under the Sundry Creditors group, with the supplier’s GSTIN and address if GST applies.
• Purchase ledger: Usually grouped under Purchase Accounts. Businesses often keep separate ledgers for local and interstate purchases, since the applicable GST differs.
• Stock items and groups: If you’re tracking inventory, each item you buy needs to exist as a stock item with its unit of measure.
• Tax ledgers: CGST, SGST/UTGST, or IGST ledgers, if the business is GST-registered.

Step-by-step: recording a purchase voucher with F9 🔗

Step 1: Open the purchase voucher screen 🔗

From the Gateway of Tally, go to Accounting Vouchers and press F9. This brings up the purchase voucher screen. In newer versions of the software (TallyPrime), the same screen opens via Alt+G (Go To) > Create Voucher > F9, as documented in Tally’s guide to recording GST purchases. The keyboard shortcut and the underlying logic haven’t changed – only the navigation path looks slightly different depending on the version your college lab uses.

Step 2: Choose the right voucher mode 🔗

This is the step most students skip past, and it’s where half the confusion about purchase vouchers comes from. Tally offers different entry modes, and picking the right one changes what fields you see:

According to Tally’s own purchase-recording documentation, you switch between these using Ctrl+H (Change Mode). Choosing Item Invoice mode for a service bill, or Accounting Invoice mode for something you actually need to hold in stock, is the single most common beginner error – it either creates phantom stock entries or leaves your inventory reports incomplete.

Step 3: Fill in the supplier and invoice reference 🔗

In the Party A/c Name field, select the supplier’s ledger (or cash/bank, for a cash purchase). Enter the Supplier’s Invoice Number and Date exactly as they appear on the physical bill – this reference becomes important later for matching your books against the supplier’s GST filings.

Step 4: Enter the purchase details 🔗

If you’re in Item Invoice mode, select each stock item, enter the quantity and rate, and Tally calculates the amount automatically. In Accounting Invoice mode, you instead pick the relevant ledger – say, “Rent Expense” – and key in the amount directly. Either way, this is where the debit side of your entry (the purchase or expense account) gets built up, line by line.

Step 5: Add tax ledgers, if applicable 🔗

For a GST-registered business, you then select the appropriate tax ledgers – CGST and SGST/UTGST for a local (intrastate) purchase, or IGST for an interstate one. Tally calculates the tax amount based on the rate configured against the stock item or ledger. As explained in Tally’s guide on recording purchases under GST, the software also lets you check a tax analysis breakup before saving, so you can confirm the CGST/SGST or IGST split is correct.

Step 6: Save the voucher 🔗

Add a narration if you want a note explaining the transaction, then press Ctrl+A (or Enter, depending on the version) to save. The voucher immediately updates the supplier’s ledger balance, the purchase account, the relevant tax ledgers, and – if inventory was involved – your stock quantity and valuation.

This is what a typical local, credit purchase of goods worth ₹50,000 with 18% GST looks like once posted – the total invoice value of ₹59,000 sits as a liability against the supplier until it’s paid.

Cash purchases vs credit purchases 🔗

The voucher structure barely changes between the two – only the account on the credit side does. For a cash purchase, you credit the Cash or Bank ledger instead of the supplier’s account, and the transaction settles immediately with no outstanding liability. For a credit purchase, the supplier’s ledger is credited, and the amount stays as a payable until you record a payment voucher later to clear it. Many businesses record even fully paid cash purchases through the purchase voucher rather than a payment voucher, simply because it keeps the transaction visible in the purchase register and, where applicable, in GST returns.

Why the GST fields matter 🔗

If a purchase voucher includes GST, it isn’t just a bookkeeping formality – it directly affects the Input Tax Credit (ITC) your business can claim. ITC is the mechanism that lets a GST-registered buyer offset the tax paid on purchases against the tax collected on sales, so tax isn’t paid twice on the same value addition. According to the GST Council’s explainer on the input tax credit mechanism, a registered person can claim credit on purchases used for business purposes, provided the goods or services have actually been received and the supplier has deposited the corresponding tax with the government.

This is exactly why the Supplier’s Invoice Number field in the Tally purchase voucher isn’t optional in practice – it’s what lets you reconcile your purchase records against the supplier’s GST filings later, and mismatches here are one of the most common reasons ITC claims get rejected or delayed.

Common mistakes to watch for 🔗

• Wrong voucher mode: Using Item Invoice mode for a service purchase creates unnecessary stock entries; using Accounting Invoice mode for goods skips inventory tracking entirely.
• Skipping the invoice reference: Leaving the supplier’s invoice number blank makes GST reconciliation and audit trails much harder later.
• Mixing up local and interstate tax ledgers: Applying CGST/SGST to an interstate purchase (which should use IGST) throws off the tax calculation entirely.
• Not verifying the party ledger’s group: If a supplier ledger isn’t grouped under Sundry Creditors, it won’t show up correctly in payables reports.

How this one voucher feeds your entire accounting system 🔗

A single purchase voucher doesn’t sit in isolation. Once saved, it flows into the Purchase Register, the Day Book, the supplier’s outstanding balance in Bills Receivable/Payable, and – where inventory is involved – the Stock Summary. This is really the point of using accounting software instead of manual ledgers: one accurate entry at the point of purchase automatically keeps every downstream report consistent, from your trial balance to your GSTR-2B reconciliation.

What do you think? 🔗

What do you think? If a business receives goods in three separate instalments against a single purchase order, at what point do you think the input tax credit should actually become claimable – after each instalment, or only once the final delivery arrives? And between Item Invoice mode and Accounting Invoice mode, which one do you think better reflects the reality of a services-only business with no inventory to track?

References

1. https://help.tallysolutions.com/article/Tally.ERP9/Voucher_Entry/Accounting_Vouchers/Voucher_Entry_in_Tally.htm
2. https://help.tallysolutions.com/article/Tally.ERP9/Voucher_Entry/Accounting_Vouchers/Creating_a_Purchase_Entry.htm
3. https://help.tallysolutions.com/gst-purchases-tally/
4. https://help.tallysolutions.com/tally-prime/gst-sez/purchase/
5. https://gstcouncil.gov.in/sites/default/files/e-version-gst-flyers/Input%20Tax%20Credit%20Mechanism-050819.pdf