Chart of accounts

Chart of accounts is a list of accounts to be used by a company. Chart of accounts may be defined by the government (as in Europe) or can be specified by the company itself according to guidelines (as in the US). Fiscal rules and reporting requirements also affect composition of a chart of accounts.

Charts of accounts are rarely published in an open, structured and machine-readable format. They usually exist as a published legal document, a PDF file, sometimes an Excel file, or may be deeply embedded in accounting software, either open source (like Odoo) or proprietary (Oracle, SAP, NetSuite, Xero or QuickBooks). Odoo in specific has a list of country localisations.

A few country charts are listed below:

• IFRS reference chart (similar to this)
• BAS (Sweden)
• SKR03 and SKR04 (Germany)
• PCMN (Belgium)
• RAS (Russia)

There are also textbook charts and sample charts like DunderMifflin Paper Company fun chart.

abacus allows to create and maintain charts of accounts as JSON files. After a chart is specified, one can proceed to open ledger, posting entries and create financial reports.