Exercise 1

Import Stock Item Masters

Published 11 Sep 2026

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This exercise teaches you how to import Stock Item master data from Excel into Tally Prime. To keep it simple, we have taken a Excel sheet that contains only one Column i.e. the Stock-Item Names. Herein, we will use the COLUMNREFERENCE attribute to fetch data from a specific Excel column.

Step 1 — Prepare the Excel sheet

Create a simple Excel sheet with few Stock Item records — one stock item per row.

Step 2 — Write the XML tags in a separate file

Open Notepad (or any plain-text editor) and write the following XML tags:

<XMLTAGS CELLREFERENCE="A1" xmlns:UDF="TallyUDF">
    <MASTER TYPE="STOCKITEM">
        <NAME.LIST>
            <!-- Fetch the value for NAME from Column A of the Excel sheet -->
            <NAME COLUMNREFERENCE="A"/>
        </NAME.LIST>
    </MASTER>
</XMLTAGS>

Step 3 — Save the file

Save it as stock-item-master-xml-tags.xml. In the Save as type box, choose All Files — otherwise Notepad appends .txt and you'll end up with stock-item-master-xml-tags.xml.txt instead.

Step 4 — Import into Tally

1. Start Tally Prime and open the company you want to import into.
2. Minimize Tally (leave it running).
3. Start udiMagic and select Excel to Tally.
4. Select option Masters.
5. Browse to select both the Excel sheet and the XML tags file — you're prompted for the XML file on the same screen as the Excel sheet.
6. Follow the wizard to complete the import.

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