You should consider your reporting requirements and the volumes and complexity of your different transaction types when deciding on the design of your chart of accounts.
Begin with a list of all the accounts you need. There are six types of account in SunAccount and each account must be set to one of them. Beside each account on your list, add the account type:
- P-Profit and Loss
- B-Balance Sheet
- D-Debtor
- C-Creditor
- T-Client
- M-Memo
You should consider using, in certain cases, SunSystems’ analysis facilities instead of accounts. For example, you can record expenses for cost centres in two ways:
- Create an account for each cost centre and each expense type. This will result in a large chart of accounts.
- Create T-Codes for each cost centre with a single account for each expense type. As transactions are booked to an account, the cost centre is recorded for the transaction.
For example, if you had five operating departments in your organisation, you could define an expense account for each department and post transactions separately by department. Alternatively, you could create a generic chart of accounts and analyse transactions to the appropriate department within each expense account.
See the section Analysing Information for further information about using analysis in SunSystems.
Balance Sheet Accounts
Take your original list and add subheadings such as: fixed assets, current assets, current liabilities, long term liabilities, capital and retained earnings. Then list all the accounts needed under each heading. Create drafts of the reports you will require for balance sheet accounts to ensure your structure is satisfactory
Profit & Loss Accounts
There are two main headings for such accounts: income, and expenditure. Create drafts of the reports you want to produce. Some reports may not show the detail of all accounts, but might summarise accounts under a heading such as work in progress, sales, general administration expenses, etc.
Debtors/Receivables, Creditors/Payables and Client Accounts
You need not list these accounts at the outset. However, it is a good time to consider whether you are going to use sundry (one-off) debtor and creditor accounts.
If you intend to use sundry accounts, refer to the subsection Pay Method in the Chart of Accounts section for further information about administering these accounts.
You should also consider how you are going to handle inter-company transactions.
Memo Accounts
Memo accounts are used to record non-financial information. Make a note of your needs in this area.
Account Security
You can use DA=Data Access Groups to restrict access to accounts. You can also identify the analysis codes which an operator can access. Please refer to the section Security for further information about account security.
Work in Progress Accounts
You can create a work in progress account and use analysis to allocate project or job numbers to this account, you could also set up each project as an account. However, it may be easier to use one of the ten T-Codes to record the project/job code. See the section Analysing Information for further information.