The chart of accounts is the list of named buckets that every amount in your books lands in — the reason "the bank fees went up" is a question the Profit & Loss can answer. It is organised as a tree of three levels:
- Classes — the big families every chart shares: Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, Expenses. Classes are the standard frame — the same in every company — which is why a Balance Sheet and a Profit & Loss always know what belongs to them.
- Groups — your company's own folders inside the classes, nestable as deep as you need (Current Assets, then Bank and Cash, then the accounts themselves). Groups carry subtotals on the statements, and usually a code range hinting where new accounts belong.
- Accounts — the postable level: a code and a name (1010 — Main Bank Account). Only accounts take postings; classes and groups only add up.
Some accounts keep a further division underneath them — subledgers: named subdivisions of one account, for the companies that need one account's detail kept apart without multiplying accounts.
You browse the chart at Accounts Management → Reports → Chart of Accounts, drawn as the tree with its subtotals. You change it — add an account, rename a group — in System Setup (16.3), where the account form also holds the flags described next.