This project's inspiration is credited to discussion with Prakash Advani and Balaji through his blog.

The DeTally Project

The DeTally project is about creating a compact, modular, multi-lingual, accounting package for the accounting systems in India. This project fills in the void as there is no open source accounting package for the Indian accounting system.

Set of components
This open source system should be developed as a set of components. Each and every function/feature of this application should be exposed as a web service. These set of components/methods should be accessible by SOAP,REST and Programming languages based APIs. By this way, integration, customization and extending the system is lot easy.

Breaking User interface lock-in
As I noted previously, user interface lock-in of existing systems like tally keeps the users. This kind of well defined set of components allows us to develop multiple interfaces. Any company can build a new interface, an Interface nearly identical to tally with same set of screens and short-cut keys will be the best starting point. By this interface tally-savvy users/accountants have no reason to stick with their pirated tally. Learning curve for data entry operators and switching cost for companies are almost zero.

Plug-ins
This modular architecture should support plug-ins. Plug-ins are optional components that can be replaced at will, either at run time, configuration time or at development time. For example when users want to add new features like sending SMS from the accounting software, they can write a new plug-in and attach to this core system. Plug-ins are like extensions to the core systems and can be used as adapters to connect other systems like inventory. Without even touching any core part of this system it should able easy to write plug-ins. Like reading data from a third party application or from a Excel sheet or calendar system.

Data import/export API
I have already explained why this is a single most required feature here. This feature along with nearly identical tally interface alone will bring lots of pirated tally users into this open source system.

Multi-language support
Supporting multiple languages is not a fancy feature anymore and especially to a country where 90% of population doesn't speak English. It should be a mandatory for any application targeted to this market. This feature will make sure this open source system reaches the un reached mass market.

No vendor lock-in
There will be no vendor lock because of its open source nature. Any software distributor with sufficient technical and functional knowledge can customize and resell this system. What this means to Independent software vendors Forget about fighting with tally or EX. It is about services (or customization), not products. Make profit by providing services. Services market will be bigger than products market.