The chart of accounts

The 16 accounts your books are born with, what each one means and how to create your own.

The chart of accounts is the list of "drawers" where every peso is kept. Every entry moves money between two or more of these drawers. Prestafolio creates it complete the day you open your account: you don't have to invent it.

What it's for and when I use it

You consult it when you want to know where an amount came from or went to: what "4102" is, why your portfolio says what it says, or how much interest you've earned this year. You'll find it under Accounting → Chart of accounts (Gold and Premium plans).

The five classes

Every account belongs to one of five families:

Class	What it is	In plain words
1 Assets	What you have	Your cash and what people owe you
2 Liabilities	What you owe	Money you received that isn't yours yet
3 Equity	What is truly yours	Your capital and accumulated profits
4 Revenue	What you earn	Interest, arrears, services
5 Expenses	What it costs you	Provisions, losses, operating costs

And the identity that never fails: Assets = Liabilities + Equity.

The 16 accounts you already have

Class 1: Assets

Code	Account	What for
1101	Cash	Your cash. It is the single authority on your cash balance.
1102	Bank	Cash at the bank (available, not automated yet).
1200	Loan Portfolio	The principal you have out on the street.
1210	Interest Receivable	Accrued interest not yet collected.
1220	Arrears Receivable	Accrued arrears not yet collected.
1290	Allowance for Uncollectibles	Your cushion against loans you won't recover.

1290 is special: it is a contra-account. It lives among the assets but subtracts instead of adding: it is the part of your portfolio you already assume is lost. See Uncollectible provision.

Class 2: Liabilities

Code	Account	What for
2102	Collection Advances	Money received that hasn't been earned yet.

Class 3: Equity

Code	Account	What for
3101	Lender's Capital	The money you put into the business.
3202	Retained Earnings	Profits from periods already closed.
3203	Result for the Period	Result of the period in progress.

Class 4: Revenue

Code	Account	What for
4101	Interest Income	Interest collected on loans.
4102	Arrears Income	Arrears collected, on loans and on services.
4103	Service Income	Recurring service charges collected.

Class 5: Expenses

Code	Account	What for
5201	Provision Expense	What you reserve each period against uncollectibles.
5202	Write-off Loss	The real loss when you write a loan off.
5301	Operating Expenses	Your business costs (recorded with manual entries).

Default accounts: the mapping

Prestafolio needs to know which account to use for each kind of movement. That link is called the mapping and it is configured automatically when your account is created: a disbursement always leaves 1101, principal always lands in 1200, interest always in 4101: 12 mappings in total.

You can re-map the default cash account under Settings → Accounting, for instance, if you'd rather operate against a bank account. It is an action reserved to the account owner (not delegable to an agent), because it changes where all your money enters and leaves.

Creating, editing and deactivating accounts (Premium)

On the Premium plan you can extend the chart: create expense sub-accounts ("5301-1 Fuel"), open an extra bank account, or deactivate one you don't use.

To create an account:

Go to Accounting → Chart of accounts and press New account.
Pick the category (it defines the class and the natural balance) and type a code and a name.
Optionally pick a parent account: the hierarchy is two levels, a sub-account must hang from a top-level account, never from another sub-account.

Rules the system enforces (it warns you before anything breaks):

The code cannot repeat within your account.
An account with a non-zero balance cannot be deleted or deactivated. Bring it to zero first.
An account mapped as a default account (the 12 mappings) cannot be deleted or deactivated. Re-map it first.
An account with posted entries cannot be deleted: erasing it would make your history lie. Deactivate it instead.
An account with sub-accounts cannot be deleted until the sub-accounts are gone.
An account used by cash sessions cannot be deleted (it would break the trail of your cash counts). You can deactivate it, as long as its balance is zero and it is not mapped.

In short: deactivating is the permissive path (it only asks for a zero balance and no mapping); deleting is the strict one (it additionally requires no entries, no sub-accounts and no cash sessions behind the account). When in doubt, deactivate: it preserves the history.

The categories (1, 1.1, 2, 2.1, 3, 3.1, 3.2, 4, 4.1, 5, 5.1) are read-only: they are the backbone of the ledger and of the financial statements. Accounts are created inside them.

Permissions

Viewing the chart: permission accounting:read (Gold+).
Creating / editing / deactivating accounts: permission accounting:coa.manage (Premium).
The owner can always do both.