Documentation/ Accounting/ The general chart by country
Loading the general chart of accounts for a country
Instead of typing the chart in account by account, you can load a country's whole general chart of accounts in a single operation. It runs to several hundred accounts, and afterwards they are edited, deleted or extended with sub-accounts like any other.
Accounting › Chart of Accounts › General chart
On this page
The countries available
| Country | The chart it loads |
|---|---|
| Spain | The Spanish general accounting plan. |
| France | The French chart of accounts. |
| Portugal | The Portuguese chart of accounts. |
| United Kingdom | The British chart of accounts. |
The country you choose here has nothing to do with the application's language or with where your company is: it is the chart of accounts you want loaded. A Spanish company with a French subsidiary can load both, each in its own company.
How it is loaded
- Press General chart on the accounts screen's bar.
- The application checks how many accounts you already have.
- Choose the country of the chart.
- If you already had accounts, choose what to do with them.
- Press Load chart and confirm.
The screen sums it up: it loads all of the chosen country's general chart of accounts in one go, and afterwards you can edit them, delete them or add sub-accounts as usual.
If you already have accounts
Before anything else, the application counts what is there and tells you how many accounts you already have, and that you need to choose what happens to them before the chart is loaded. From there, two routes, and the difference between them is large.
Keeping your own accounts
This is the safe option, and the one to take in almost every case. The screen describes it as adding only the chart's accounts you are missing, leaving the ones you already have on the same code exactly as they are, and duplicating nothing.
| The account's situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| In the chart and you did not have it | It is created. |
| In the chart and you already had it on the same code | It is left alone. Its name is not touched. |
| You had it and it is not in the chart | It is kept. |
It is what to choose once you have created sub-accounts of your own, or renamed accounts to suit the house's way of doing things: that work is respected.
Wiping and loading clean
The second option deletes every account you currently have before loading the chart. The screen does not hide it: all your current accounts are removed before the chart is loaded, and it cannot be undone.
The confirmation is explicit and shows how many accounts are about to go. It makes sense in one particular case: where the chart loaded is the wrong one, another country, or a trial, and you want to start from scratch.
Before using it, bear in mind that supplier and client records pointing at those accounts are left with no account assigned.
While it loads
The load is not instant: there are several hundred accounts and the screen shows the progress. The warning is plain, do not close or reload the window until it finishes, and the close button is disabled while it runs.
When it ends, the result is shown as two figures: how many accounts were created and how many you already had and were left alone. That second figure is the confirmation that the keep option did its job.
What to do afterwards
- Go over the list and delete the accounts your company will not use. A shorter chart is quicker to handle in the searches.
- Create your sub-accounts. The general chart brings the three-digit accounts and the main ones; the supplier and client sub-accounts are yours.
- Assign the accounts to the supplier and client records.
- Set each company's bank account if you are going to mark documents as paid or collected in cash.
Things that come up
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The wrong country's chart has been loaded | The wrong one was picked in the drop-down. | Load again with the wipe-and-load-clean option, if there were no accounts of your own. |
| After loading, fewer accounts appear than expected | Many already existed and were kept. | That is correct. The result says how many were left alone. |
| The load does not finish | There are several hundred accounts and it takes time. | Wait without closing the window. Closing it leaves the load half done. |
| The chart fails to load | The connection dropped during the operation. | Repeat with the keep option: nothing already created will be duplicated. |
| The supplier sub-accounts are missing | The general chart does not include them: they belong to each company. | Create them by hand or import them from Excel. |