The Chart of Accounts

This is a list of all the accounts that your company uses. In essence, it is how you categorise
your accounting system.

Sage Line 50 provides you with a simple chart of accounts that is suitable for the Profit and Loss
report, the Balance Sheet report, the Budget report and the Prior Year reports.
The chart of accounts is also used when you run your Year End. The Year End option looks to
the chart of accounts to see which accounts make up the Profit and Loss report. These are
cleared down during the Year End procedure.

Sage Line 50 enables you to tailor the chart of accounts to suit your business. By editing the
chart of accounts, you can add in new categories or make present categories more suitable to
your line of business. For example, you can change the sales category from product and export
sales to the actual items your company sells.

Use the COA option from the Nominal Ledger window if you want to change the chart of
accounts. You can edit the default chart of accounts or you can add your own chart of accounts
if you want. If you want to add new sections to your profit and loss report or your balance sheet,
you must amend your chart of accounts by following the steps detailed below.

To add a chart of accounts

1. From the Sage Line 50 toolbar, click Nominal.

2. From the Nominal Ledger window toolbar, click COA.

3. Click Add.
The New Chart of Accounts window appears.

4. Enter the name of your new chart of accounts in the Name box.

5. Click Add.
The Edit Chart of Accounts window appears.

The chart of accounts is subdivided into category types. By default, the category types for
the Profit and Loss report are Sales, Purchases, Direct Expenses and Overheads; and for
the Balance Sheet report they are Fixed Assets, Current Assets, Current Liabilities, Long
Term Liabilities and Capital & Reserves.

Each category type is subdivided into category accounts, each of which consists of a
heading and a range of nominal accounts, for example, the category type ‘Sales’ is
subdivided into Product Sales, Export Sales, Sales of Assets, Credit Charges and Other
Sales by default. Sage Line 50 has automatically set up category accounts for each
category type in your default layout of accounts, but you can amend these if necessary.
If you opted to create your own nominal account structure during the ActiveSetup Wizard,
the default chart of accounts does not contain any category accounts.

6. Select each category in turn from the Category Type list, and for each one enter or amend
the following details in the boxes provided.

Tip: To insert a line, press F7. To remove a line, press F8.

'Description'
This is the heading for this type of category. This appears on your financial reports. You can change this if necessary.

'Category Account'
This is the heading for each range of nominal accounts in this
category, one line per range.
You can define up to 80 category account ranges for each
category.

For example, in your Sales category you may want to set up
headings such as Home Sales, Export Sales, Product Sales and
so on. You can enter up to 60 characters of text for each heading.

'Low/High'

Use the 'Low' and 'High' boxes to determine the range of nominal
accounts to be included for each category account.
If there is only one code in the range, enter the same number in
both boxes. Where more than one nominal account belongs to a
category account, enter the lowest nominal account number in
the range in the Low box and the highest number in the range in
the High box. The codes you enter are inclusive.

'Floating Nominal Accounts'

Note: The floating nominal accounts only appear when you are
editing the current assets and current liabilities categories.
Certain nominal records shown in the balance sheet could be an
asset or a liability depending on the balance. These accounts are
known as floating nominal accounts. To make your management
reports correct, you can get the program to detect the balance of
these fluctuating accounts and enter them into the correct section
of the balance sheet.

In order for Sage Line 50 to do this, place any floating nominal
accounts in the boxes provided for both the current assets and
current liabilities. When you enter a nominal account description in
one category, you are prompted to copy it to the other (for
example, from current assets to current liabilities). To do this, click
Yes.

For example, enter Bank Account 1200 in the Current Assets and
Bank Overdraft 1200 in the Current Liabilities.

When you run your financial reports, all of the nominal accounts entered in each range will
be added together to give a subtotal for the category account heading to which they
belong.

7. Click Check to see if you have missed any nominal accounts or put any information in
twice.

8. If there are discrepancies in your chart of accounts, you can choose whether you want to
print, preview, e-mail or save the information to a file by selecting one of the options in the
window and then click Run.
A report is generated, informing you of any potential errors in your new chart of accounts.
You should fix any errors before entering any transactions.

9. To save your new chart of accounts layout, click Save.
To exit without saving click close

To edit your chart of accounts

Use this option to change your default chart of accounts. You may want to do this if you want
to extend or change an existing chart of accounts category range.

1. From the Nominal Ledger window, click COA.

2. Select the chart of accounts layout you want to change and then click Edit.
The Edit Chart of Accounts window appears.

3. Select each category in turn from the Category Type list, and for each one enter or amend
the details in the boxes provided.

4. Click Check to see if you have missed any nominal accounts or put any information in
twice.

5. If there are discrepancies in your chart of accounts, you can choose whether you want to
print, preview, e-mail or save the information to a file by selecting one of the options in the
window and then click Run.
A report is generated, informing you of any potential errors in your new chart of accounts.
You should fix any errors before entering any transactions.

6. To save your chart of accounts click Save, or to exit without saving click Close.

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