Chart of Accounts

Overview

The Chart of Accounts (COA) is the heart of a government financial management system. The COA enables fiscal controls, discipline and transparency. It supports performance and policy management. The COA also serves to classify financial and budgetary data based on an organization’s requirements.

The Chart of Accounts is the key element for a public financial management system. The COA provides:

Metadata describing transaction types
Reporting and analysis capabilities
Performance measurements
Budgetary controls

The Chart of Accounts differs from one government to the next depending on level of modernization, organizational structure and reporting requirements. FreeBalance Financials and FreeBalance Peformance Budgeting support the development of flexible Charts of Accounts. We have encountered one situation where the COA was not flexible enough to meet the customer requirement (Government of NWT), although there is doubt about the effectivenss of such a complex COA. The COA capabilities differ between Financials and Performance Budgeting. Therefore, to create a single COA component that is reused among all applications, the COA design must meet all expected government requirements.

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Chart of Accounts screen Fields

Field	Description
Code	Unique identification number of the Chart of Account.
Is Finalized	If checked, the Chart of Accounts is finalized and cannot be modified unless unchecked.
Validate Roll Downs	When this value is true, system will not validate that elements within concepts has the respective roll-up.
Uses Predefined Concepts	If flag is on, COA copy and use the predefined concept.
Abbreviation	Short form of the Chart of Account title.
Description	Short description of the Chart of Account.
Source COA	Represents the current information related to a specific COA.
CoA Fiscal Year	Fiscal year for which CoA is configured.