Aalekh

Partners argue about Aalekh less over features and more over arithmetic. At around ₹125 per client per month with all features included, twenty clients is a modest line item; two hundred is a budget conversation. Aalekh is an AI practice management and GST/ITR filing platform for CA firms (https://www.aalekh.ai/), sitting across practice-management and gst-filing. For that per-client price the listed plan includes GST filing for GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, GSTR-2A/2B reconciliation, ITR filing management, invoice data extraction, and a financial dashboard. Key features echo the same: one-click GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B filing, automated GSTR-2A/2B reconciliation, ITR filing with status tracking and deadline alerts, AI invoice data extraction, multi-client dashboard, plus revenue, expense and cash-flow tracking. Platforms are web. The public integration focus is GSTN. Trial is three days with no credit card required. Featured in this directory for firms that want filing and visibility in one pane rather than five spreadsheets.

Monday morning without a lying spreadsheet is the operating bet. The multi-client dashboard should show who still needs GSTR-1, who is stuck on 2A/2B mismatches, and which ITR deadlines are coming. Scanned invoices and phone photos go through AI extraction so data entry is not pure typing. Revenue, expense, and cash-flow views sit beside compliance status for firms that also want a light financial pulse per client. That combination — filing widgets plus practice visibility — is aimed at Indian Chartered Accountants and SMEs managing compliance across many clients. It is not marketed as a deep Tally posting engine. Public materials do not tell a rich Tally automation story. If ledger automation into Tally is your bottleneck, start in the bookkeeping automation aisle of this directory. If you already run a heavily customised practice management system, Aalekh must beat habit, not win a feature bake-off on slides.

Per-client pricing has a quiet trap: dormant clients still cost money until someone prunes the roster. Model annual cost at active-client count, not total names in your WhatsApp groups, and include ITR season when headcount and urgency spike. Multiply ₹125 by the clients you will actually file for twelve months, then add the partner time to onboard. Deadline alerts help only if a human owns the red rows. Nominate a weekly compliance captain who clears mismatches and escalates clients who never send invoices. Teach clients a boring photography rule for AI extraction: flat surface, bright light, four corners visible. During the three-day trial, measure extraction fix-time on ugly files, not demo PDFs. Use ITR status tracking as a control log beside portal acknowledgements, not instead of them. Status green in a dashboard is not a substitute for the acknowledgement number in your working papers.

Credential and data handling deserve a direct conversation. When a platform files on a client’s behalf via GSTN, ask how GST credentials and financials are stored, who can export them, and what happens when you leave. Phrase the privacy check as operational hygiene: can you revoke access per staff member, and can you pull a client’s filing history if you migrate. One-click GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B filing sounds efficient; still keep a pre-submit review step with a named senior for material GSTINs so speed does not become silent error.

Versus Finexo, Aalekh leans filing widgets with per-client economics; Finexo leans tasks, WhatsApp ops, and capacity-banded annual plans. Pick the pain first. If your fire is chasing documents and task ownership, a filing-heavy dashboard alone will not save you. If your fire is GSTR-1/3B volume plus 2A/2B recon across many GSTINs with ITR status in the same pane, Aalekh’s shape matches. Spend the trial on ugly files and a realistic client count. Optionally split filing-only clients to a cheaper lane so ₹125 is not applied by inertia to every name on the books. Best for CA firms managing GST and ITR compliance across many clients who want one dashboard — provided someone still owns the red rows after the logo is paid for.