Using Reversing Journal Vouchers in Tally ERP.9

If you have ever tried to check your company’s financial position before month-end salaries or rent are actually paid, you know the problem. Your Balance Sheet looks lighter than it should, because a real liability simply is not recorded yet. Tally ERP.9 solves this with a neat feature called the Reversing Journal Voucher, activated with the shortcut F10. It lets you record a temporary entry, see its effect on your reports, and have it disappear automatically once its job is done. Here’s how it works and how you can use it for tasks like salary projections and provisional accounting.

What is a reversing journal voucher? 🔗

A reversing journal voucher is a special, non-accounting voucher type in Tally ERP.9. Unlike a regular journal entry, it does not permanently alter your books of accounts. Instead, it is designed to automatically reverse itself after a date you specify, which is called the “Applicable To” date. Because it does not touch your actual ledgers, you can use it freely for projections, provisions, and temporary adjustments without worrying about cleaning up entries later.

These vouchers exist mainly to solve a timing problem in accounting. Real transactions, such as salary payments or rent, often get recorded a few days after the month in which they were actually incurred. If you want an accurate interim report, that gap needs to be bridged, and a reversing journal voucher does exactly that, but only for reporting purposes.

Why businesses use reversing journal vouchers 🔗

Reversing journal vouchers are mainly used for interim or MIS reporting, where accruals need to be reflected even though the actual voucher has not been passed yet. They are particularly handy for two recurring situations that almost every business runs into.

Salary and expense projections 🔗

Say you want to view your Balance Sheet as of 30th June, but that month’s salaries are not disbursed until the first week of July. Without an entry, this liability simply will not show up. Tally’s own documentation gives an almost identical scenario, where an entry dated 30th June is used so that the report for that day includes the unpaid liability, without the entry affecting any other date’s books. This is precisely how a reversing journal voucher is used for pay projections: you record the projected salary expense so decision-makers get an accurate picture of dues, even before the payroll voucher is actually passed.

Depreciation and other provisions 🔗

Depreciation is usually calculated and booked at year-end, but if you want monthly or quarterly reports that reflect a more realistic financial position, you can spread it out using reversing journals. For instance, a depreciation entry can be dated the first of a month and kept applicable until the end of that same month, so it appears only in that period’s reports and nowhere else. The same logic works for accrued income, prepaid expenses, or any provision you want reflected temporarily.

How is a reversing journal different from a regular journal? 🔗

It helps to see the two side by side before you start creating entries. The core difference lies in whether the voucher permanently changes your books or exists only for reporting.

Enabling reversing journal vouchers in Tally ERP.9 🔗

Before you can create these vouchers, you need to switch the feature on. It is off by default in a new company.

1. Go to Gateway of Tally and press F11: Features.
2. Select F1: Accounting Features.
3. Look for the option Use Reversing Journals & Optional Vouchers and set it to Yes. Tally’s own help documentation confirms this is the exact setting that activates reversing journals and optional vouchers together under the accounting features menu.
4. Accept the screen to save your changes, usually by pressing Ctrl+A.

Once this is enabled, a new voucher type becomes available in the accounting vouchers menu, and you will also unlock Scenario creation under Accounts Info, which you will need later to actually view the effect of these entries in your reports.

Creating a reversing journal voucher: A salary projection example 🔗

Let’s walk through an actual use case. Suppose your company’s monthly salary bill is ₹1,20,000, and June’s salaries will only be paid in the first week of July. You want your 30th June Balance Sheet to reflect this pending liability.

1. Open the voucher screen. Go to Gateway of Tally, Accounting Vouchers, and press F10 for Reversing Journal, or select it directly from the voucher type list.
2. Set the voucher date. Press F2 and set the date to 30th June, the date as of which you want the liability reflected.
3. Debit the expense account. Debit “Salary Expense” with ₹1,20,000.
4. Credit the provision account. Credit “Salary Payable” or “Provision for Salary” with the same amount, so the entry is balanced.
5. Add a clear narration. Something like “Being provision for June salary, applicable up to 5th July” avoids confusion later.
6. Set the Applicable To date. This is the date up to which the voucher stays available for inclusion in scenario-based reports, after which it effectively reverses itself.
7. Accept and save the voucher.

This entry sits quietly in the background. It will not show up in your regular Trial Balance or Balance Sheet unless you specifically ask Tally to include it, which brings us to scenarios.

Bringing the entry into your reports with scenario management 🔗

A reversing journal voucher only becomes visible in a report when it is pulled in through a Scenario. This two-step design exists deliberately, so your standard financial statements always show actual, confirmed figures unless you choose otherwise.

To set this up, go to Accounts Info, then Scenario, and select Create. Give it a name such as “Provisional” or “Projected,” and enable Include Actuals so that both real and projected figures show up together. Tally’s documentation notes that this feature lets you choose which voucher types to include or exclude to arrive at realistic forecasting, which is exactly what you need when comparing actual versus projected numbers.

Once the scenario exists, open your Balance Sheet, use the New Column option, and under “Types of Values to Show,” pick your scenario. The report will now display the salary provision alongside actual figures, but only for that day. Tally’s official guide on scenario management confirms this workflow, walking through the same sequence of selecting Reversing Journal from Accounting Vouchers and accepting the entry before it becomes usable in a forecast report.

Reviewing your reversing journals 🔗

Since these vouchers don’t appear in your regular Day Book, Tally gives you a dedicated place to track them. Go to Gateway of Tally, then Display, then Exception Reports, and click Reversing Journals. This opens a Voucher Register report where you can select a specific month to see every reversing entry passed during that period, along with its applicable date. This is useful when you have multiple provisions running at once, such as salary, rent, and depreciation, and want to audit them before month-end closing.

A few points worth remembering 🔗

Reversing journal vouchers are powerful, but only when used correctly. A handful of practices will save you trouble later.

• They are not for correcting mistakes. If you have made a genuine posting error, correct it with a normal journal entry or a debit/credit note, not a reversing journal.
• Keep narrations detailed. Since these vouchers sit outside your normal books, a vague narration makes them hard to trace weeks later.
• Set realistic applicable dates. The applicable date should match when the actual transaction is expected to be recorded for real, so your projections and actuals line up smoothly.
• Remember they never touch your actual ledgers. This is what makes it safe to experiment with multiple projections without any risk to your real financial data.

Understanding this feature well is genuinely useful for anyone studying voucher entry as part of a broader accounting curriculum, since it reflects how real businesses manage interim reporting between actual accounting events.

What do you think? If your organisation had to report a realistic financial position mid-month, which recurring expense would you provision for first using a reversing journal voucher? And do you think keeping projected entries completely separate from actual books, as Tally does, is the safest way to prevent accidental misstatements?

References

1. https://help.tallysolutions.com/article/Tally.ERP9/Voucher_Entry/Optional_Non-Accounting_Vouchers/Reversing_Journals.htm
2. https://help.tallysolutions.com/article/Tally.ERP9/Voucher_Entry/Optional_Non-Accounting_Vouchers/Optional_Vouchers.htm
3. https://help.tallysolutions.com/article/Tally.ERP9/Advanced_Features/Advanced_Accounting_Features/Scenario_Management_in_TallyERP.htm
4. https://tallysolutions.com/tally/scenario-management-in-tally-erp-9/
5. https://help.tallysolutions.com/article/Tally.ERP9/Reports/MIS_Reports/Display_Reversing_Journals.htm
6. https://help.tallysolutions.com/article/Tally.ERP9/Voucher_Entry/Accounting_Vouchers/Voucher_Entry_in_Tally.htm