TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Overview
- Chart of Accounts
- Managing and Editing Chart of Accounts
- Exporting Chart of Accounts
- Other Notes on the Chart of Accounts
Overview
The chart of accounts is a listing of all accounts used in the general ledger of an organisation and is a cornerstone of any financial system. Joiin reports on the balance of accounts at a certain period of time and therefore a list of accounts from the source system (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or manual) has to be maintained to ensure accurate reporting.
The Chart of Accounts tab on the Settings page allows you to view and manage those accounts.
Chart of Accounts
You access the Chart of Accounts by selecting Settings from the top right menu (cog icon) and select the Chart of Accounts tab. The Chart of Accounts page displays a list of all the consolidated Accounts from the Chart of Accounts of all the Companies you've connected to.
The accounts are grouped into Balance Sheet and Profit And Loss accounts - click on the tab at the top to select one or the other.
When you connect to new companies or remove old ones and whenever a data refresh occurs (either manually or automatically each day) the list of accounts will be updated.
List of Accounts
A list of all accounts is displayed. Accounts with the same type, code and name (depending on your configuration) will be merged into a single account name in the same way that occurs when you run the Joiin reports. The list has the following columns.
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| CONSOLIDATED ACCOUNT | Name/Code of Account |
| TYPE | Joiin Account Type. See the Chart of Accounts Mappings article for more information on account mapping. |
| UNDERLYING ACCOUNTS | Number of underlying accounts. This shows the number of company accounts that are grouped under this account name. There will be one account for each company containing that account - and if manual mapping has occurred (see mapping section below) there may be more accounts. The Consolidate symbol will appear next to the number if there are manually mapped accounts. Click on the down arrow on the left to expand the row and see the underlying accounts. |
| STATUS | The status of the account: Active, Inactive or Mixed. Mixed means the account is in more than one company and is Active in some and Inactive others. To see more detail on the status per company, see the exporting section below. |
NOTE: Accounts with colons in their names will be displayed as nested groups in reports when Group sub-accounts is enabled, but appear flat in the COA list itself.
Filtering List of Accounts
The list of accounts can be filtered by entering text or selecting filters at the top. Accounts can be filtered by whether it is a Balance Sheet or Profit And Loss account and by account name/code, type, company and status.
Managing and Editing Chart of Accounts
You can map and group accounts together so that, in all reports, multiple accounts will appear under a single name. You can also change the type of accounts. This can be useful for:
- identifying and fixing naming anomalies and typos across multiple entities
- grouping similar accounts such as bank accounts
- managing regional categorisation differences such as Expense accounts
Grouping Accounts
To group accounts together, select the accounts you wish to group, e.g. Bank Fees and Bank Charges, and click on the Consolidate Accounts button.
You will be prompted to select the "Primary" account under which to group all the accounts. In all reports, only the primary account name will be seen, all the underlying accounts will be combined into a single value for the primary account.
Click on Merge to complete the process.
Restoring
You can revert a manual grouping back to its original state. You can see where an account has been grouped when the consolidation symbol appears next to the number of underlying accounts.
Click on the Restore button to restore all the mappings in this group. Alternatively click on the down arrow to expand the row and see the list of underlying accounts. Then click on the Restore button against each account you wish to restore to its original state.
Restore All
You can also reset all mappings by clicking on the three dot menu at the top right of the list and selecting Restore All.
AI COA Suggestions
You can use the Joiin Intelligence COA Mapping Agent to identify accounts that are candidates for merging, renaming or re-classifying - and make those changes for you. Simply click on the COA Suggestions button to search AI for suggestions.
A list of suggestions will be presented, one at a time. You can choose to accept or skip each suggestion. When you have viewed all suggestions click the Apply button to make the changes.
TIP: COA Suggestions will be based on the accounts currently being viewed - so you can use the filters to refine the list and receive only suggestions relating to that list.
Changing Account Type
To change the type of an account, select the accounts you wish to set to a particular type and click on the Change Type button. The select the required type from the list of types and those accounts will be changed, the account type in the list will be displayed in orange to indicate it has been changed and you can hover over the name to see its original type.
Restoring
You can revert back to the original type by cicking on the Undo button on the right of the account name.
NOTE: When you change Account Type, if you have existing custom layouts, the accounts that have changed may move back to the default group - you can re-arrange accounts in your custom layouts as required.
Exporting Chart of Accounts
You can export your Chart of Accounts to a CSV file by clicking on the CSV download button.
The downloaded file will include the accounts that are appearing on screen - so if you have applied any filters they will also apply to the downloaded file. This is helpful, for example, to get a list of accounts for a single entity.
The download will include a column for each Company with the status of the account for that company - if the company does not have this account "Not found" will be displayed.
The download also displays whether the accounts has been Eliminated.
Other Notes on the Chart of Accounts
Renaming accounts in the source system
Joiin identifies an account by its type, code and name. So when you rename an account, or change its code or type, in Xero, QuickBooks or another connected system, Joiin sees a different account after the next sync.
Anything you've set up against that account is moved across to the renamed account for you, covering:
- Custom layouts — report rows and chart series
- CSV and forecast budgets
- Elimination exclusions
- Custom exchange rates
This happens on the first data sync that picks up the rename — the daily refresh, or a manual refresh of the company. Your budgets and layouts won't be shown as edited; their last-modified date is left as it was.
Standard reports and budgets imported from Xero or QuickBooks are not affected, as they follow the account in your accounting system directly.
NOTE: If the same account exists in more than one company, Joiin waits until it has been renamed in all of them before moving your setup across. Until then the original account still exists through the companies that haven't been renamed, so your existing configuration continues to work and is left alone. In the meantime you may see both the original and the renamed account in your report — the original in your custom group, the renamed one in its default group. They merge back into a single account, in your custom group, once the last company has been renamed.
NOTE: Where the renamed account is already in use in the same place — for example a report row for it already exists — Joiin leaves your existing setup alone rather than adding a second reference, which would double the account's total.