Creating New Chart of Accounts or Modifying Existing??

[NeilZ]

Here's the crux of the matter.

We have a COA that was created a few years ago, and really needs to be updated as we've merged ministries, changed account numbers,etc. Which leads to two questions:

1. Which is the easiest way to do this: create a new chart of accounts or modify the existing?

2. If create new; what's the best way of doing this. If modify existing; same question!!

Thanks in advance.

[Zaphod]

I'm a little too close to the process to give an objective answer as to which would be easier, but as far as how to, it comes down to two choices:

1) Restart accounting. You can then use the Accounting Setup Assistant to build your basic chart of accounts, then edit it as you choose. The downside to this is you would lose all your accounting history, because the restart is very destructive.

2) Use the Move/Merge accounts feature in v9 to edit your existing chart of accounts. You can move accounts within the same fund to new account numbers, or combine accounts into one. Again, this works on accounts within the same fund. If you're looking to merge two funds together, there's not a good way to do that short of transferring balances then sort of ignoring the old fund. You can change the fund number to something like 99 or z1 or something like that, but you won't be able to delete it.

Ok, I guess I can say which would be easier - restarting accounting and building a new chart of accounts. The Accounting Setup Assistant makes that a snap. However, if you really want to keep your old history (short of making a backup and archiving that to view later), you'll have to go with the much more work-intensive process of moving accounts around.

[emellesee]

I'm wondering if you can renumber (move) an account without changing the history. For example: In 2005, our community garden fell under the Property budget, with a line number to group it under the property expenses. In 2006, we are moving the community garden to the Outreach budget.

From my understanding of the help files, if I use the "move account" feature in v9, it will also move my history so that it will look like the community garden was always part of the Outreach budget and not just in 2006. What we have done is to just create a new account with an Outreach line number. The disadvantage is that we can't compare 2006 expenses to 2005.

Have I missed something or is there a way to change the account number so that I can still compare 2005 to 2006 community garden expenses without changing the fact that the garden was part of Property in 2005 and is now Outreach? (If this isn't currently possible, can it be added to the wishlist for the next version?)

MLC

[Jeff]

You are right that if you move an account number the history for that account changes. So if you go back and run an I&E report for 2005, the community garden account will appear in the Outreach budget not under property budget where it was in located in 2005. There is not a way to move an account but still have it show up in its old place for history reports. There really is 2 options, one it to move the account as discussed or create a new account to use starting in 2006 and mark the old account as inactive so no more transaction get posted to it.

By the way, just because there was some confusion recently. There are 2 ways to move an account. Say for example you have the accounts 01-5410 and 02-5410. You decide that you really need to have account 02-5410 be a different number and don't want it to consolidate with 01-5410 anymore. To move 02-5410 to a different number but leave 01-5410 in its current place untouched, go to the chart of accounts and select details for the 02-5410 account. The move there will only move the 02-5410 account.

Different scenario but same accounts as above. You are redoing your chart of accounts and want to move 01-5410 and 02-5410 to 01-5780 and 02-5780. In other words move the 5410 account to 5780 in all funds. In this case all you need to do is go into the chart of accounts and change the fund number toward the top of the form from 5410 to 5780. When you click save it will move that account in all funds where it is used.

There was some confusion recently with someone changing their chart of accounts and they thought they had to move each account in every fund seperately.