Documentation/ Accounting/ Several companies
Accounting for several companies
Where you keep the books for several companies, an accountancy practice, or a group with several entities, each one needs its own chart of accounts, its own suppliers and its own clients, without mixing. The application handles it by tying every record to its company.
Side menu › Account › Clients / Companies · and the filter by company on each screen
On this page
Two ways of working
| A single company | Several companies | |
|---|---|---|
| Chart of accounts | One | One per company |
| Suppliers and clients | A single list | Kept apart by company |
| Filter by company | Not shown | Appears on every screen |
| Client column in the lists | Not shown | Yes |
You do not have to be a practice: an ordinary company running several entities splits its documents the same way, each to the entity it belongs to, with its own chart of accounts and its own suppliers.
The second way is turned on by how the account is set up. If you do not see the filters by company described here, your account works with one company and needs none of this.
Setting up a second company, step by step
This is the whole route, end to end, for a second company to have its own chart of accounts and its suppliers on different accounts:
- 01Create the company. Under Side menu › Account › Clients / Companies, the New button. Fill in at least the name and the tax number, which cannot repeat across two records. The fields are set out in Clients and companies.
- 02Load its chart of accounts. Under Side menu › Accounting › Chart of Accounts, the Import button. Step 1 of the dialogue, Select client/company, is what ties those accounts to that company and to no other. The four steps are detailed in Importing the chart of accounts.
- 03Tie each supplier to its company. In the supplier master, the record carries a company field. That is what lets the same supplier sit on a different nominal account in each company: two records, one per company, rather than one shared between them.
A shortcut: if at step 2 the company is not in the list, the import dialogue itself offers "Can't find the company?" › "Create new company". You create it right there, without leaving the importer and without losing what you have already filled in.
Two people on the same company
Worth saying plainly, because it is the question that reaches support: within one company there are no two default accounts. The nominal account is not assigned per user but per company and supplier record. One record holds one supplier account and one expense account, and whoever changes them changes them for everybody working on that company.
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| Each person handles a different company or client | Separate them properly: a company record for each, its own chart of accounts and its suppliers tied to it. That is the step by step above. |
| Both work on the same company and need different accounts for the same supplier | Not possible as a default. You correct the account in the document's accounting classification, and that change affects only that document, not the record. |
Before giving up on it, it is worth checking that the supplier records are not mixed up between companies: if a supplier is tied to the wrong one, the symptom looks the same and that cause does have a fix.
Where the separation shows
When it is on, three screens change in the same way:
- Chart of Accounts. A filter by company appears, and the column saying which company each account belongs to. And when coding a document, the dropdown offers only that entity's accounts: they no longer come mixed together.
- Supplier master. Same filter, same column.
- Client master. The same.
And all three records gain a field for the company the record belongs to, found by tax number or by name.
The company's record
Companies are managed on a screen of their own, with two blocks of details:
| Block | Fields |
|---|---|
| Basic information | Name, tax number, trading name and tax rate. |
| Accounting information | Contra account, contra sub-account and bank account. |
The tax number is unique: the application does not take two companies with the same one, and says so if you try.
The screen also takes an import of companies from Excel, with a four-column template: name, tax number, trading name and tax rate. Name and tax number are required.
Its accounting details
The record's three accounting fields are what make that company's entry come out complete:
| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Contra account | The entry's default destination when the document gives no other. |
| Contra sub-account | The detail of the above. |
| Bank account | The till or bank the payment entry goes against on documents marked as cash. |
Setting them is part of creating a new company. Without them, its documents are processed but reach the accounting program with gaps.
Filtering by company
The filter at the top of each list cuts what you see down to one company. It is the normal way to work: pick the company at the start of the day and everything you see belongs to it.
It is also the number one reason something appears to be "missing". If an account, a supplier or a client is not there, the first thing to look at is which company is filtered.
The filter has an option to see them all at once, useful for auditing but awkward for working: account codes repeat between companies and the list turns ambiguous.
Importing per company
The nominal accounts import makes you choose the company before uploading the file. It is the first of its four steps, and the import button stays disabled until you do.
That has a practical consequence: to load the same chart into three companies you have to run three imports, one per company, with the same file. There is no single load that covers them all.
The same applies to loading a country's general chart: it is loaded into whichever company it belongs to.
Global accounts
An account's company field is not required. An account with no company assigned belongs to none in particular.
In practice it is worth avoiding when you work with several companies: an account with no company drops out of sight as soon as you filter, and ends up hard to find. Always assigning the company is the sensible course.
Things that come up
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| An account you have just created is not there | It was created with no company, or in a different one from the one filtered. | Check the filter and the account's company field. |
| The imported accounts cannot be seen | They were imported to another company. | Change the filter. The company is chosen at step 1 of the import. |
| It will not let you create a company | Another one with the same tax number already exists. | Look for it in the list: it is probably already there. |
| The chart has to be loaded again for each company | Charts are per company. | That is how it is meant to work. Repeat the load for each one. |
| Two companies' suppliers show up mixed together | No filter is applied. | Choose the company in the filter at the top of the list. |