Saved once, by whoever bills. Nobody types it again.
Stock is valued from this ledger — the same value the balance sheet shows.
Live on the same day. Re-checked every night.
Two kinds of software, and a hole in the middle.
Web apps made billing and stock easy to run from anywhere — and stopped at the invoice. Desktop accounting packages keep proper books — and stay on one PC, fed by hand, weeks behind. Most growing businesses pay for both and re-type everything between them.
- Invoices, stock, POS, orders
- Who owes what, a few reports
- No ledgers, no trial balance
- “Profit” is a dashboard number, not a P&L
- Proper ledgers, groups, vouchers
- Trial balance, P&L, balance sheet
- Not on the shop floor, not on a phone
- Books trail operations; stock and books disagree
Invoices, bills, POS, stock, production, portals and the phone app — the operations layer a web app gives you.
Chart of accounts, ledgers, journal vouchers, trial balance, P&L and balance sheet — the books a desktop package keeps, live.
Row by row
Categories rather than products — no two apps are alike, but the shape of the gap is.
| What a growing business needs | Web billing apps | Desktop accounting | Hisabe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bill, receive stock and sell from any browser or phone | Yes | Noone PC, or the office network | YesWeb app plus Android & iOS, same roles everywhere |
| Double-entry books: trial balance, P&L, balance sheet | Noinvoices and summaries, not books | Yes | YesStored general ledger; all three statements live |
| Chart of accounts with the standard groups | No | Yes | Yes28 standard groups, your own sub-groups under any of them |
| Journal vouchers, opening balances, general ledgers | No | Yes | YesDepreciation, provisions, capital, loans — numbered, posted, audited |
| Every document is already a voucher — nothing re-keyed | Noexports at best | Nothe billing app’s bills are typed again | YesInvoice, bill, receipt, expense, production run — each posts itself |
| Keyboard-first entry the accountant already knows | Partlymouse-driven forms | Yes | YesEnter walks fields; PgUp/PgDn through accounts; Alt+C to create |
| Landed cost, production, job work, RFID, portals | Partly | No | YesOperations modules that post straight into the books |
| GST return workings an auditor can tick | Partlya GST summary | Yes | YesGSTR-3B layout, ITC register, HSN summaries, TDS register |
| Many users, server-side permissions, isolated data | Yes | Partlyper-PC licences | Yes206 permission codes; your own database schema; scheduled backups |
| Hand the books to your auditor in their package’s format | Nospreadsheets | Yesit is the package | YesNative XML export, or a live-sync connector on their PC |
Four things that had to be true.
Closing the gap is not a reports tab called “accounts”. It took a stored general ledger underneath every module, and these four properties on top of it.
Your documents are the vouchers.
Nobody in the business writes a voucher. Saving an invoice, a bill, a receipt, an expense or a production run writes it — as a balanced double-entry voucher in the same books your auditor reads.
- Sixteen kinds of document post themselves: invoices, bills, returns, credit and debit notes, receipts and payments, expenses and their part-payments, bank entries, hand-loan and investor entries, journals, stock transfers, adjustments, production runs and job-work receipts
- Posting is idempotent — edit or cancel a document and its voucher is rebuilt, never duplicated. The whole ledger can be rebuilt from the documents at any time
- The books refresh right after the request that changed them, sweep every fifteen minutes, and re-check themselves in full every night
- Anything that cannot be put in the books is listed as an issue with its reason — never dropped silently
The customer owes the total; sales and GST are split for you.
Freight is owed to the transporter, costs the stock, and never inflates the supplier.
A non-cash receipt must name a bank account, so the bank statement and the books agree.
Reverse charge self-assessed, TDS deducted — the landlord gets ₹90,000, the books get all of it.
A cost head linked to an expense moves it out of the P&L and into stock value.
The one voucher you do write — for the entries no document creates.
A chart of accounts your auditor recognises.
Every business starts with the twenty-eight standard groups an Indian accountant expects, and every party or account you create is a ledger under one of them.
- Customers, suppliers, transporters, hamalis, bank accounts, expense heads, hand loans and investors are all ledgers — each master has a group picker
- Add your own sub-groups under any standard group; they inherit the parent’s nature so a trial balance always reads correctly
- General ledgers you create yourself — furniture, a term loan, the proprietor’s capital, provisions, depreciation — with an opening balance
- Expense heads under a Trading group are direct expenses; under Indirect Expenses they fall below gross profit — classification is a matter of where the ledger sits, not a hidden flag
- Capital Account
- Reserves & Surplus
- Loans (Liability)
- Bank OD A/c
- Secured Loans
- Unsecured Loans
- Current Liabilities
- Duties & Taxes
- Provisions
- Sundry Creditors
- Branch / Divisions
- Suspense A/c
- Fixed Assets
- Investments
- Current Assets
- Bank Accounts
- Cash-in-Hand
- Deposits (Asset)
- Loans & Advances (Asset)
- Stock-in-Hand
- Sundry Debtors
- Misc. Expenses (Asset)
- Sales AccountsTrading
- Direct IncomesTrading
- Indirect Incomes
- Purchase AccountsTrading
- Direct ExpensesTrading
- Indirect Expenses
- Staff welfare your sub-group
Three statements, live, that agree with each other.
Trial balance, profit & loss and balance sheet read from one stored general ledger, so the profit on one is the profit carried on the other, and closing stock is the same figure on both.
- Trial balance for any date range — opening, period debits and credits, closing — with a “Ties” check and a difference line when opening balances do not agree
- Groups open into ledgers; a ledger opens into its statement with a running balance, the other side of every voucher, and a link back to the source document
- P&L in the Indian layout: a Trading account to gross profit, then Profit & Loss to net profit. Opening and closing stock are valued at moving-average cost from the stock ledger — the same valuation the stock reports show
- Balance sheet as on any date, with Stock-in-Hand valued and the P&L line split into this year and earlier years
Hand the books to your auditor, in their format.
Most auditors keep clients’ books in a desktop accounting package. Hisabe speaks its native XML, so the vouchers it posted are the vouchers they receive — same names, same groups, same numbers.
- Export masters, vouchers and a rollback file for any date range, or run a small connector on the accountant’s PC that keeps the package in step every minute
- Choose what crosses over: accounts and GST only, or stock items and stock journals as well
- Edits and cancellations follow; masters go before vouchers; proformas never cross
- Device keys per connector that you can revoke; everything exported is logged
- Sales · purchase · receipt · payment
- Credit & debit notes · journals
- Stock journals, when you want stock items too
- Ledgers with the groups they sit in
Pick a date range and download masters, vouchers and a rollback file in the package’s own XML. Import, and the vouchers appear under their own voucher types.
A small connector on the accountant’s Windows PC fetches new and changed vouchers every minute and posts them into the package. Edits and cancellations follow; masters go first.
- Same ledger names, same groups
- Same voucher numbers as Hisabe
- Balances match to the paisa
- Proformas never cross over
The screens an accountant actually lives in.
Built to be driven from the keyboard, the way the desktop packages taught a generation of accountants — and reachable from any browser.
Account Master
One screen for every ledger — customers, suppliers, banks, expense heads, transporters, hamalis, hand loans, investors and your own general ledgers — grouped the way the trial balance groups them. Each kind opens its real form in place, and a ledger tab shows the statement. Convert a customer into a supplier when nothing references them yet.
- Group
- Sundry Debtors
- GSTIN
- 29ABCDE1234F1Z5
- Credit
- 30 days · ₹2,00,000
- Opening
- 84,300 Dr
- Closing
- 1,84,300 Dr
Journal vouchers & opening balances
Numbered per financial year, saved as drafts, posted when both sides agree, cancelled with a reason. Opening balances for everything a party or product master does not already hold — assets, loans, capital — with a one-click “Balance it” into the capital ledger you choose.
Daybook quick entry
Every rupee that moves, from one row at the top of the daybook — instead of ten screens. Receipts and payments settle the oldest open documents first; the rest stays on account. Expenses open the full editor in place. The same row is on the phone.
Credit control, where the money is lost
Credit days and limits per customer — or per product category, with the shortest term winning — and an organisation switch that holds an invoice at posting when a party is over limit or past due. Overrides need their own permission and a reason, and leave a trail. Collection tours, party targets, over-due and tour-wise due reports close the loop.
- Outstanding ₹1,84,300 + this invoice ₹34,100 is over the ₹2,00,000 limit by ₹18,400
- INV-1987 is 12 days past the 30-day credit period
Overrides need their own permission and are written to the audit trail with the reason.
Banking & reconciliation
- Savings, current, cash and petty-cash accounts with a statement per account and a running balance
- Card, UPI, cheque and transfer receipts from anywhere land on the right statement automatically
- Entry-level reconciliation marking against your bank’s statement
- Bank charges and interest recorded with their GST split and the bank’s GSTIN, so input credit is not lost in the ledger
Expenses, with the tax done properly
- GST split on every expense, reverse-charge self-assessment, ITC treatment including section 17(5) blocked credit, and the TDS section deducted
- Part payments against an expense, recurring expenses that post themselves, and bills read from an uploaded photo or PDF
- Debit notes to customers, expenses a customer billed you netted in their ledger, and an expense recovered on the next invoice at the same GST rate
- A supplier payment can settle a supplier’s expense bills alongside purchase bills
Capital & lending
- Investors as capital accounts: contributions and drawings, a fixed return accruing on the reducing balance or a share of declared profit paid out by distribution runs
- Hand loans (haath udhaar) given and taken, with interest accrued, paid and outstanding
- Both post to the books under Capital Account or Loans — and both appear on the balance sheet where an auditor expects them
Direct vs indirect, decided once
- An expense head is direct or indirect by the group its ledger sits in — change the chart, and every report follows
- Cost lines with no ledger of their own — transport, commission, bank charges, interest, investor returns — have one setting each for Trading or P&L
- Production cost heads linked to an expense take it out of the P&L and into the value of what was made
Return workings an auditor can tick, not a summary.
The GST and audit registers read the same documents as the books — so the ITC you claim is the ITC in your ledger, and the expense that reached the P&L is the one on the register.
Five registers, one period
- GSTR-3B built in the portal’s own table order — outward, reverse-charge inward, ITC available, ITC reversed and ineligible — per GSTIN and period
- An ITC register with one row per inward document — bill, expense, supplier credit note, bank charge — showing its treatment and the 3B table it lands in, to tick against GSTR-2B
- HSN/SAC summaries by rate, outward (GSTR-1 table 12) and inward (GSTR-9 table 18); rate-wise and document registers
- Expense register with vendor GSTIN, bill number, SAC, place of supply, tax heads, ITC treatment, TDS and the cost that reached the P&L — with consistency checks
- TDS register by section with deductee and PAN — deducted by you, and deducted from you
- E-invoices with an IRN and signed QR straight from the invoice; e-way bills generated with the IRN or as the portal’s bulk-upload file
- Per-branch GSTINs: tax, numbering, printing and returns follow the branch that has its own registration
| Table | Particulars | Taxable | IGST | CGST | SGST |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1(a) | Outward taxable supplies | 48,60,000 | 1,20,000 | 3,77,400 | 3,77,400 |
| 3.1(d) | Inward supplies liable to reverse charge | 1,00,000 | — | 9,000 | 9,000 |
| 4(A)(3) | ITC · inward supplies liable to reverse charge | — | 9,000 | 9,000 | |
| 4(A)(5) | ITC · all other | 90,000 | 2,80,800 | 2,80,800 | |
| 4(D)(1) | Ineligible · section 17(5) | — | 2,100 | 2,100 |
Note · 2 forward-charge bills from unregistered vendors are listed but not claimed — they will not appear in 2B.
Figures from the same example period as the statements above: ₹48.6 lakh of outward supplies at 18%, ₹36.2 lakh of purchases, one reverse-charge rent bill. Every register exports to a spreadsheet (.xlsx) for the CA.
What the books will not let you do wrong.
Accounting software earns trust by refusing things. These are the refusals built in.
Journals never touch cash, bank or parties
Those balances come from receipts, payments and bank entries. A journal can only move between general, system and expense ledgers — so the daybook, the bank statement and the books cannot drift apart.
Standard groups stay standard
The twenty-eight seeded groups cannot be renamed or deleted, and a sub-group cannot be moved to a different nature. Your auditor sees the names they rely on.
Nothing posts unbalanced
A journal voucher will not post while debits differ from credits — the screen shows the difference, not an error code. Every generated voucher is balanced by construction.
Posting is a permission, not a button
Creating a journal and posting one are separate permission codes, enforced on the server. Credit-limit overrides need their own code and are written to the audit trail with the reason.
Rebuild beats reconcile
Because every voucher is derived from a document, the whole ledger can be rebuilt on demand. If the trial balance ever disagreed with the documents, one click puts it right — no manual adjustments to hunt for later.
Issues are shown, not swallowed
A document the books could not take — a party with no group, a bank entry with no account — appears in an issues list with the reason, and the statements say how many are missing.
The books in the owner’s pocket.
The same statements, read from the same ledger, in the Android and iOS app — under the same permissions.
- Trial balance, P&L (Books) and balance sheet for any date, with groups that open into ledgers
- Any ledger’s statement with running balance — tap a customer and read their account
- Account Master on the phone: browse by group, open a party’s own form to edit
- Daybook quick entry and the daybook itself, for the day’s money
- Journal vouchers, opening balances and general ledgers are entered on the web; the phone reads them
Questions accountants ask us.
Do I still need a separate accounting package?+
For running the business and keeping the books day to day, no — the chart of accounts, ledgers, journals, trial balance, P&L and balance sheet are all here. Many businesses still keep their auditor’s desktop package for finalisation and filing, and Hisabe hands the books over in that package’s native format so nothing is typed twice.
My CA already works in a desktop package. Will they have to change?+
No. Export the books as XML for the date range they ask for, or run the small connector on their PC so their package stays in step automatically. They see the same ledger names, groups and voucher numbers they would see in Hisabe.
What happens to a voucher when I edit or cancel the document?+
The voucher is rebuilt from the document, in place. Cancelling removes it from the books; the audit trail keeps the history. Nothing is duplicated and nothing needs a reversing entry from you.
Where do opening balances come from?+
Party and bank openings come from their masters, opening stock from the stock you import, and anything else — fixed assets, loans, capital — from the Opening Balances screen. If the two sides differ, “Balance it” puts the difference into a capital ledger you pick.
Can I keep stock out of the books?+
The books always carry stock as a valued Stock-in-Hand line, computed from the stock ledger at moving-average cost. What you can choose is whether stock items and stock journals cross over to your auditor’s package, or only accounts and GST.
Can I see the books on the phone?+
Yes — trial balance, P&L, balance sheet, any ledger’s statement and the account master are in the Android and iOS app under Reports → Books. Journal vouchers and opening balances are entered on the web.
What about my old daybook habit of entering every payment in one place?+
That is exactly what the daybook quick entry is: one row for a customer receipt, supplier payment, transporter or hamali payment, salary, commission, hand loan, investor entry, expense or bank transfer. Receipts and payments settle the oldest open documents first and the rest sits on account.
Run your business on numbers, not guesses.
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