Having a good understanding of the chart of accounts is essential when it comes to creating new nominal records and running your management reports.
In this session we explained
- What the chart of accounts is.
- How to create new layouts.
- How to amend existing templates to help you report the way you want.
Missed the session, don't worry, a recording is now available >
View slides from the presentation:
Sage 50 Accounts (UK) - Chart of Accounts - 202211 - Handout.pdf
Questions from today and previous sessions
| Question | Answer | Article link |
| Does the set up in the COA affect the Dashboard widgets ? | Yes, if you make changes to the COA it can Impact the Profit and Loss within the business dashboard. | N/A |
| Our sage nominal codes have been built up and added to over several years. We have similar sales types that we would like to report on ie 4000 and 4010 and 4022, also 4001 and 4011. Unfortunately we have several other sales codes separating them. How would I set up the P&L to show the types without overlapping? | You would have to split your ranges as the chart of accounts works on a low/high range. Year end is a good opportunity to move/rename nominal codes to help with this going forward. | Open the Edit chart of Accounts article |
| Does a COA with 'partial' mean it's wrong? Is there a way of removing the partial tag? | It means there are errors in your chart - edit your chart of accounts and click check to find out what the errors are. | Open the Partial Chart of Accounts article |
| Can departments be added to the chart of accounts? For example, for Sale on P&L so the split is per department & nominal code. | Although you can't add departments to Charts of Accounts, there are departmental Profit and Loss reports available in the system, depending on your version and licence. The PnL report that allows you to specify department can be found in your nominal reports > profit and loss reports > and is called Transactional Profit & Loss. The criteria on this report allows you to specify an individual department. Within Departments there is also the Departmental PNL which acts in the same way. | Open the additional Profit and Loss reports article |
| Is there an easy way to see a nominal that you may have missed including in the COA? | The best way to see what is missing is to run the check option in the top left corner this will generate a report for you of any missing codes. | Open the chart of Accounts errors article |
| Is it possible to make the chart of accounts do additions of the separate sections and add additional sub headings please? | While it isn't possible to add additional sections eg. Overheads, Direct expenses etc, it's possible to add additional categories on the chart of accounts under each section for example, within Overheads or Direct Expenses it is posssible to add further ranges. | Open the Chart of Accounts article |
| Do you have to have a range with codes as ours have been set up with individual codes high would be the same as low? | That will also work. it does not always need to be a range. | N/A |
| Can you change the chart of accounts range in this financial year when you still have last year open? Will it overwrite last year's too? | If you change the current chart of accounts rerunning reports back into last year may show differences. It may be advisable to create a new chart of accounts and keep the original (potentially renaming it something else). | N/A |