Chart of Accounts

Overview

The term “Chart of Accounts” refers to a collection of coding variables that an organization uses to classify and analyze transactions and produce management reports.

In basic terms, users can populate groups of tables (including Fund tables, if your organization uses self-balancing multi-fund accounting as part of its financial management processes) with codes that are applicable to the way an organization operates and manages its resources. For example, you can create an Organization group containing tables for your cost centers, responsibility centers, divisions and branches. The number of groups and tables defined in the system will vary from one organization to another.

By establishing relationships among these tables, you are telling the system how information is to be rolled up and rolled down. For example, cost centers can roll up to responsibility centers (RC), divisions and branches. Consequently, any transactions containing a specific cost center code in its coding block will also update the applicable RC, division and branch. The result is complete management control.