How to manage the Chart of Accounts

How to navigate, view, import/export the Chart of accounts in Sage Accounting.

1. View all your ledger accounts.
2. Export your ledger accounts to an Excel spreadsheet.
3. Sort and filter the list to find a ledger account.

The chart of accounts lists all accounts used by your business, known as ledger accounts. Use it to analyze income, expenses, assets, liabilities, and capital in reports. This helps you see your business's performance at any time. Each account has a unique number. The category you select when creating the account determines its report appearance. The number can be whatever you choose.

Accounting uses a standard layout designed for small businesses, including GIFI codes. Customize the layout to suit your business needs.

The standard chart of accounts includes GIFI codes for new businesses. Existing businesses can manually enter GIFI codes. Watch a video about GIFI codes.

Find a ledger account

1. Go to Settings, Business settings, Chart of accounts.

2. Use the Search box to filter the list by a ledger account by name or number.

3. Sort the list by Category, choose from the drop-down and click Search.

Export your chart of accounts

Send the list of ledger accounts to an Excel spreadsheet. To save time setting up a new chart of accounts, export the existing chart, make changes, and import it back into Accounting. You can only do this when you haven’t entered any transactions.

The export shows the nominal code, ledger name, control account, category, tax rate, and visibility. See Import a chart of accounts file.

Import your chart of accounts

Use our CSV file template to import your existing chart of accounts. This is useful if you're coming from another system and want to use the same ledger accounts. You can only do this when you haven’t entered any transactions.

See Import a chart of accounts file.

Change your ledger accounts

Create new ledger accounts or change existing ones to suit your business. For example, change Product Sales to Gardening Sales if you're running a gardening business.

See How to create a ledger account.

Print a list of ledger accounts

Use the chart of accounts list report to view and export a list of your ledger accounts. Use ledger accounts to analyze income, expenses, assets, liabilities, and capital in management reports.

To print or save the chart of accounts list

1. Go to Reports.
2. Select the Chart of Accounts report.
3. To view a list of ledgers for a particular category type, select it from the Category list.
4. To print or save the report, click Export.