Migrate from Busy — same depth, no more per-machine licences.

Is TatvaBooks a good alternative to Busy?

Yes — if you want the same double-entry depth on the cloud: anywhere access, automatic backups, concurrent multi-user and no per-machine licences. Busy still wins on deep godown / batch / serial inventory and offline-first Windows use. Many teams move accounting, GST and payroll to TatvaBooks and keep Busy only where its inventory goes deeper.

Honest caveats: TatvaBooks doesn’t yet file e-invoices live to the NIC portal, and we migrate masters via CSV rather than pulling your full transaction history. Busy has been a workhorse for Indian traders and goes deeper on inventory granularity than we do today.

Why move from Busy now

Busy has quietly served Indian traders, distributors and small manufacturers since the late 1990s — the #2 desktop accounting software after Tally. The software works. The problems are around it:

• Per-machine licensing. Every additional PC in the office is another licence to buy and renew. A growing team means a growing licence bill.
• Windows-only.No Mac, no phone, no browser. If you’re not at the office Windows machine, you’re not in the books.
• Manual backups. The data lives on the hard drive. One crash, one ransomware attack, one stolen laptop — and your books depend on whoever last remembered to copy the file to an external drive.
• No real cloud. Remote-desktop workarounds exist, but they are workarounds. An accountant working from home in 2026 should not need an IT ticket to open a ledger.
• AMC renewal cycle.The annual maintenance contract keeps you on the latest version and eligible for support. Skip it and you fall behind on GST changes — exactly the updates you can’t afford to miss.

What Busy does well — let’s be honest

Before we sell you on the switch, here is what you genuinely lose if you walk away from Busy:

• Inventory depth. Godown-wise, batch-wise and serial-wise stock tracking with FIFO / weighted-average valuation — honed over decades for Indian traders and distributors. TatvaBooks does stock with multi-location and single-level BOM, but Busy goes deeper on batch and serial control.
• Offline-first.Busy keeps working when the internet doesn’t, and for counter-billing in parts of India where connectivity is unreliable, that matters.
• Keyboard-speed voucher entry.Power Busy users have years of muscle memory punching vouchers at speed. That’s real productivity that takes time to rebuild in any new system.
• Low upfront cost. A perpetual licence with annual AMC is a model many small businesses understand and prefer over a monthly subscription.

If your business runs on those Busy strengths, the right answer might be to keep Busy for inventory and move accounting, GST and reporting to TatvaBooks. We will say so during the kickoff call.

What TatvaBooks brings over today

• Masters — your account ledgers, customers, suppliers and stock items, with GSTINs and addresses, imported from a CSV onto a Schedule III chart of accounts. No re-typing.
• Opening balances — set as on your cut-over date, with our help, and reconciled against your Busy Trial Balance before you sign off.
• A clean parallel run — historical vouchers stay in Busy, which you keep read-only, while new transactions go into TatvaBooks from the cut-over date.
• An immutable audit trail — every voucher you post in TatvaBooks carries an edit-log, continuous from the cut-over date forward.

Automated migration of historical vouchers is something we’re building with our beta partners. Today the honest answer is: masters come across, openings are set with our help, and your history stays safe in Busy during the parallel run.

What stays behind, or works differently

We would rather be specific about gaps than wave them away:

• Busy’s deeper inventory. Batch-wise and serial-wise stock tracking is lighter in TatvaBooks than in Busy. If batch/expiry or serial numbers are central to your operation, keep Busy for that workflow.
• POS hardware integrations.Barcode scanners, thermal printers and cash drawers tied to Busy’s billing have no TatvaBooks equivalent today.
• Historical payroll records.TatvaBooks has its own payroll (PF, ESI, PT, TDS and full-and-final), so you run payroll here — but we don’t import historical payroll data from Busy.
• Custom reports and print formats. Any custom report layouts or print formats built inside Busy need to be re-created in TatvaBooks where supported.

The onboarding process

1. Day 0 — Prep call. 20-30 minutes with someone on our team. Busy version, number of companies, cut-over date, what to bring over, what to leave behind.
2. Day 1 — Export masters. You export your account ledgers, parties and items from Busy to Excel/CSV and upload them. We map ledgers to the Schedule III chart of accounts and confirm with you.
3. Day 1 — Opening balances. We help you set opening balances as on the cut-over date, reconciled against your Busy Trial Balance. You sign off on the numbers.
4. Day 1 onward — Parallel run. Busy stays read-only for its history. New transactions go into TatvaBooks; you reconcile at month-end.
5. First cycle — Go-live. A walkthrough with your team, then your first GST cycle with us on WhatsApp.

Beta onboarding — included

During our private beta we help you get set up at no cost. That includes the kickoff call, importing your masters, setting opening balances, the go-live walkthrough and a hand through your first GST cycles. We are still learning how Busy files are structured in the wild, so doing this work alongside you is how we make the product better.

Public-launch pricing for onboarding help is still being finalised. If you onboard during beta, your onboarding stays free regardless of when public pricing lands.

Timeline expectations

• Single company: masters import in minutes; setting openings and getting comfortable is a session or two. Most are posting live within a day or two.
• 2-5 companies, multi-branch: a few days, run one company at a time so each set of openings is signed off.
• CA firm with 20+ client books: a couple of weeks, working through books in batches and prioritising the ones with active GST cycles.

After go-live

The first 30 days is a parallel run. Busy stays read-only; new transactions go into TatvaBooks; you reconcile at month-end and confirm the books agree. Most teams stop opening Busy entirely by week three.

No more AMC renewals, no more per-machine licences, no more backup anxiety. Your books are on the cloud, accessible from any device, backed up daily, with an immutable audit trail from the cut-over date forward.

Frequently asked questions