There are many accounting packages are available in the market, Tally remains the undisputed king of all financial accounting packages available in India. Tally is capable of handling any kind of transaction you would need, whatever your business. In order to use tally, you neither need to learn new accounting methods nor should change your existing style of handling accounts. The information can be fed as well retrieved at random and all human errors can be corrected. 
A transaction in accounting terminology means transfer of money or money’s worth from one party to another, for example sale of goods, purchase of furniture etc. are examples of transactions. Fundamentally there are two systems of transactions: Pre transaction and post transaction. Let us explore it in detail, assume that you have to make payment to a party, in pre transaction, this is done by first creating a voucher, which is signed by payee and then the transaction is completed by actually making the pay creation of internal entries in case of completed transactions. The post transaction system follows the traditional practice of entering a voucher or cash bill into a cash book after the payment has been made. Tally is a post transaction system. It follows the traditional methods of accounting, that is, the payment is first made on the basis of existing accounting methods (i.e., against a voucher or a cash bill) and that information is fed into the Tally. The simple fact that your existing system of accounting remains untouched by Tally is a big reason behind the success of this package. 
Prerequisites for the learning tally
The area of the Tally is very wide, you could be the owner, financial controller, accountant, manager or an auditor. All that is required to learn Tally is fundamental knowledge of accounts and familiarity with basic accounting terminology. This means that you should understand certain basic terms like an account, a debtor, a creditor, assets, liabilities, capital etc. Even if you are not well versed with the accounting, you can still use Tally effectively at the same time become known to accounting methods. 
Tally have many versions like 3.0, 4, 4.5, 5.0 5.4 etc. Tally release 5.0 and 5.4 are window based software in which you feel the window look like programs, than the text based screens.