The honest answers, including the ones that aren’t flattering.
Yes, while Total is in beta. When sales open, the Business licence is planned at ₹9,900 plus applicable taxes for perpetual use of that major version, including 12 months of updates and support. Optional Care renewals extend updates and support; existing books and portable export are never disabled. See pricing.
Yes. Total ships a native macOS build (Apple Silicon) and a Windows installer. Both talk to the same~/Documents/total-style data folder and the same file format, so a company created on one platform opens on the other if you copy the folder across.
Nothing you enter ever leaves the machine. There is no account, no login, and no background sync — your books are a folder of SQLite files that only your copy of Total touches. The only network call the app makes on its own is a periodic check against the update endpoint to see whether a newer version exists; it sends nothing about your company, ledgers, or transactions.
Yes. Company details has a CA export pack that writes a Tally-importable XML file plus every register (sales, purchase, ledger, stock, GST) as CSV in one go, so your accountant can work in whatever tool they already use without you re-typing anything.
No — Total is built for a single machine. It does have local user profiles with PIN login and owner/accountant/viewer roles, plus a full audit trail of who changed what, but that’s access control on one installation, not simultaneous multi-user editing over a network. If several people need to post vouchers into the same books at the same time, Total isn’t the right fit yet.
Yes, via Tally’s XML export. See Coming from Tally for the exact steps and the current limits (cost centres and bill references are skipped; multi-currency amounts land as INR).
Everything works. Vouchers, reports, GST computation, invoicing, payroll, banking reconciliation, backups — all of it runs locally with no network required. The only feature that wants a connection is the periodic update check, and if that fails the app just keeps running on the version you have.
Total’s builds aren’t code-signed yet, so Gatekeeper quarantines the download and shows that message. Right-click → Open does not get past it for this build. The fix:
# 1. Move Total.app into /Applications (drag it, or:)
mv ~/Downloads/Total.app /Applications/
# 2. Clear the quarantine flag
xattr -cr /Applications/Total.app
# 3. Open normally — double-click, or:
open /Applications/Total.appYou only need to do this once per download. Full details in Getting started.