The chart of accounts (COA) is the list of all the accounts used to record financial transactions in the general ledger of an organization.

The accounts are usually listed in the order of appearance in the financial reports. Most of the time, they are listed as follows :

• Balance Sheet accounts:
• • Assets
  • Liabilities
  • Equity
• Profit & Loss:
• • Income
  • Expense

When browsing your chart of accounts, you can filter the accounts by number, in the left column, and also group them by Account Type.

Configuration of an account

The country you select at the creation of your database (or additional company on your database) determines which fiscal localization package is installed by default. This package includes a standard chart of accounts already configured according to the country’s regulations. You can use it directly or set it according to your company’s needs.

Warning: It is not possible to modify the fiscal localization of a company once a journal entry has been posted.

To create a new account, go to Accounting ‣ Configuration ‣ Chart of Accounts, click on Create, and fill out the form.



Code and name
Each account is identified by its code and name, which also indicates the account’s purpose.

Type
Correctly configuring the account type is critical as it serves multiple purposes:

• Information on the account’s purpose and behavior
• Generate country-specific legal and financial reports
• Set the rules to close a fiscal year
• Generate opening entries

To configure an account type, open the Type field’s drop-down selector and select the right type among the following list:



Default taxes
Select a default tax that will be applied when this account is chosen for a product sale or purchase.

Tags
Some accounting reports require tags to be set on the relevant accounts. By default, you can choose among the tags that are used by the Cash Flow Statement.

Allow reconciliation
Some accounts, such as accounts made to record the transactions of a payment method, can be used for the reconciliation of journal entries.

For example, an invoice paid with a credit card can be marked as paid if reconciled with its payment. Therefore, the account used to record credit card payments needs to be configured as allowing reconciliation.

To do so, check the Allow Reconciliation box in the account’s settings, and save.

Deprecated
It is not possible to delete an account once a transaction has been recorded on it. You can make them unusable by using the Deprecated feature.

To do so, check the Deprecated box in the account’s settings, and save.