Managing Your Chart of Accounts

Your chart of accounts is the category list behind every transaction — the accounts money moves between. GoodBooks builds a starter chart during setup; this article covers shaping it to fit your organization. (For what the account types mean, see Understanding Account Types.)

Where: left menu, Accounting → Chart of Accounts. Viewing requires chart-of-accounts access; editing is for administrators and bookkeepers.

Adding an account

Click Add Account:

• Account Name (required) and an optional Description ("helps others understand when to use this account").
• Account Type — Asset, Liability, Net Asset, Revenue, or Expense. Choose carefully: the type can't be changed after creation (it determines debit/credit behavior and statement placement). Wrong type? Inactivate the account and create a new one.
• Sub-Type — finer classification for reporting. Two sub-types unlock features: Bank Account makes the account appear in the register, reconciliation, and deposit pickers (and reveals the check printing setup); Credit Card enables the Credit Cards screen. Your plan limits active bank accounts (Free: 2, Foundation: 3, Core: 10, Pro: unlimited).
• Parent Account — optional; sub-accounts indent under their parent on the chart and roll up on reports. "None (Top Level)" is the default.
• With donor restrictions — appears only on Net Asset and Revenue accounts; it's what routes activity into the restricted column of your statements. See Restricted vs. Unrestricted Money. Only one Net Asset account per restriction class is allowed — GoodBooks enforces it.

Account numbers

Optional. Turn on "Use Account Numbers" under Settings → Organization and every account gets an editable number field (unique within your organization, up to 20 characters). The common convention — 1000s assets, 2000s liabilities, 3000s net assets, 4000s revenue, 5000s expenses — is a good default, and it's what the starter chart uses, but nothing enforces it. Leave the setting off and names alone carry the chart.

Renaming, retiring, deleting

• Rename any time — history follows the account; reports simply show the new name.
• Inactivate accounts you no longer use (the ban icon). Inactive accounts disappear from entry dropdowns but keep their history and stay visible on the chart with an Inactive badge.
• Delete (offered only on inactive accounts) is for accounts created by mistake that were never used. An account with any transaction history should be inactivated, never deleted — its history belongs to your books.
• Accounts marked System (net assets, the restricted 4110/4900/4910 set) are managed by GoodBooks — rename if you like, but leave the rest alone.

Importing a chart from a spreadsheet

Migrating from another system? Chart of Accounts → Import accepts .xlsx, .xls, or .csv. Click Download Template for the exact format; the columns are:

Rules worth knowing: a parent must already exist or appear earlier in the same file (otherwise the account is created at top level with a notice); duplicate names are skipped; an unrecognized sub-type still creates the account, just without the sub-type. After the import you get a results page with counts and a per-row notice for anything skipped or adjusted.

One post-import task: imported accounts all land as unrestricted. If any imported Revenue or Net Asset account should carry donor restrictions, open it and set the flag by hand.

Good to know

• The chart shows no balances — that's what reports are for; the Account Ledger report shows any account's full activity with a running balance.
• Every add, edit, and deactivation is written to the activity log.
• Keep the chart lean. Accounts multiply quietly and each one is a decision at entry time — if two accounts always get lumped together in reporting, they should probably be one account (or a sub-account pair).