Fixing Your Chart of Accounts

Overview

A well-organized chart of accounts supports robust responsibility reporting, makes it easy to answer “what if?” questions and helps eliminate data entry errors. However, many organizations cling to the primitive practices of a half-century ago that impose barriers to developing budgets, holding people accountable, gathering useful data and keeping errors from creeping into their financial statements.

Highlights

Current Chart of Accounts Best Practices

• Why developing a chart of accounts begins with studying your organizational chart
• How to identify your account segments
• Determining the order of your account segments
• Best practices for numbering account bases
• How to avoid memorization

• How big company and small company software differs
• Two key approaches for preserving your historical data
• What to know when making major chart of accounts changes

Prerequisites

Some real work experience working with general ledger systems

Designed For

Anyone with responsibility for a General Ledger System

Objectives

• Understand current chart of accounts best practices and how to fix the current mess that you may have.

Preparation

None