Learning has a cost. Every body who has learned something has paid its cost. You pay cost not only in terms of money but also in other forms too. These forms of paying the price can the time taken or extent of learning etc. Learning Tally is also not an exception. You have to pay the price. Let me explain this fact a little more.

You can learn tally in three different ways. One you learn tally from a person who knows, Two: at your own from books and helping material from net or any other source and Three from an institute who is capable of teaching you tally.
In all three ways you pay the price in different ways. In the first way the price can be the charge you pay plus damage done to you due to lack of knowledge of your tutor. In second case the price can be less in terms of money but can be more in terms of time spent in learning it at your own. In third case price can be the institute fee you have paid and extent of knowledge you have gained or time saved in learning.

The best way too learn is to learn it from some competent institute, preferably from TallyAcademy as the price paid , the extent of knowledge you get and time you spend has perfect balance.

The second option is not bad if you are ready to pay the price in terms of your time. Yes, you can learn tally from home. For that you have to become a keen learner. Lets see how you can learn tally from home.

Arrange for study material :
Before learning Tally first arrange all study material. The best books can be TFAP books which can be bought from any TallyAcademy. They are best because they are about the latest versions and have full features explained with practical examples.There are good amount of exercises are also in it. Except it there are certain other books available in the market specially on Tally.

Arrange for Software :
First of all we have to which software version you want to learn. At this point of time version 7.2 is most appropriate. The books too covers this version. So arrange Tally 7.2 educational version with latest release and with stat files and Help file. The stat files are necessary as these would be necessary for statutory reports like VAT, service tax etc. It may happen that while learning it from books you stuck some where. Or this is also very much possible that what ever you are looking on books is not coming in actual tally. At this point just press help and context sensitive help would come. Study the concept and syntax from there and proceed.
One more difficulty you would face is that as you are using educational version then you would not be able to enter the transactions on actual dates as educational software would only take 1, 2 and 31 of each month. In this situation you have to enter the dates of your vouchers only in 1,2 and 31 date. Believe me you would be able to see all effects except the few like interest calculation, forex gain etc where you would find some difference but it would do.

When you struck up:
When you struck somewhere then you have very few options but these can help.
Contact your peers who have some knowledge of tally software.
Post your query at Yahoo answers, chances are good that you get the answer.
Joint some group on internet where you can mail your queries. TallyUsers is a good choice.
Give your queries at ApniTally.

What to do afterwards:
After completing the books you can give the TCP test in nearest TallyAcademy. You can practice on Demo TCP Test also.

Related Readings : Getting Started in Tally, TCP FAQ's, Demo TCP Test, How to become a TCP

While working on Tally a need to protect your data is felt. There are several ways to protect your data from unwanted people. The technique you put in hiding or protecting your data depends on from whom you want to protect your data.

Every body who works on your computer or share your computer should not have access to your sensitive data. A causal users who sits on your computer would get access to your financial information if it is not protected or hidden from general view.

Protection from Layman

To protect your data from layman or causal user you can put password in company you are working. While creating company put Use security control to Yes and enter the administrator's name and its password.This would offer you first Level of security in Tally.

Protect from people within

Some times you have to protect your company information from people who are into accounts but you want to restrict their access. For example the financial data should not be given to stores or production department, despite the fact all departments are using the same software. For this situation tally has a feature of granting user level access. Specified users can go to specific level only and not beyond that limit. Pres Alt+ F3 in Gateway of Tally and select Security Control. Then you can define the users and their passwords and their level of controls.

Protection from outsiders
Third and the most important people are the outsiders from whom you want to protect your data. These outsiders can be sales tax people or Income tax people or any govt. agency who want to access your data and you want to protect it. These type of people are very hard to avoid. For those tally has provided a facility with stealth security i.e. tally vault password. This facility would hide your company name from screen and data would be encrypted. This data cannot be opened without password. Even if the owner forgets his password then itself no data can be recovered.While in company creation screen just enter TallyVault password. The name of the company would be hidden in company selection screen.


Other Common Sense Tricks
Other then this few common sense techniques can be used to hide company data. These can be:-

1. Don't save your data in computer, instead use USB pen drive. When computer would not have data then who would get access to it.
2. Hide directories and files by giving them hidden attribute.
3. Saving the files to any drive or directory other then Tally's own data directory would not show the company in company selection menu at default location.
4. Some advance hiding techniques like hiding info in JPG formats etc. can be used.

Another 4 simples ways of protecting your data.

Related Links : Recover your data ,