Chart of accounts overview
A chart of accounts contains details of each general ledger account in your organisation’s trial balance by account code and description. It is used to validate imported trial balance data to ensure there are no missing or unmapped accounts. Accordingly, the chart of accounts must include all active accounts in your accounting system, and each account must be unique.
An organisation may have more than one chart of accounts, depending on how many accounting systems are being used. The same chart of accounts can be used by one or more entities in your organisation.
A chart of accounts relates to a specific reporting year. The same chart of accounts can be mapped differently for various reporting purposes. When a chart of accounts changes in your accounting system, it must be updated in ONESOURCE Corporate Tax.
A chart of accounts can be created in any of the following ways:
- Importing from a file (for example, a Microsoft Excel or text file)
- Manually entering account codes and descriptions
- Copying and pasting account codes and descriptions from one file to another
The most common way to create a chart of accounts is importing data from an electronic file, which most accounting systems are capable of generating. If your chart of accounts will have many accounts, importing is the most efficient way to create it.
When you open a chart of accounts, you can manually edit the account codes and descriptions, copy and paste account details from another file, or import account details from an external file.
For Trust clients that tend to use the same chart of accounts and map for all entities in all clients, an "all clients" chart of accounts and map can be created and maintained rather than creating the same chart of accounts and map for each client. (Only applicable in a multi-client database.)
If you are using a multi-client database, you have the option to specify whether a chart of accounts is available for all clients or only the current client.