Chart of Accounts

The Chart of Accounts (COA) is the master list of every "bucket" your business records money into. Cash sits in Bank, money customers owe you sits in Accounts Receivable, sales sit in Sales Revenue, rent sits in Rent Expense — those are accounts. Every transaction in Ambivo Books ultimately moves money between two or more accounts in the COA.

This guide explains how the COA is structured, how to add and edit accounts, and how to keep the chart tidy as the business grows.

Getting There

• Open the Accounts item in the left sidebar
• The full chart appears, grouped by account type

If Accounts is not visible in the sidebar, the accounting module is disabled on the entity. Open Settings → Enable Accounting and pick a preset to enable it.

How the Chart Is Organized

Every account has six things you care about:

Account Types

Books defines 25 account types in its domain configuration. Most charts of accounts only ever use a dozen or so — the rest exist for unusual cases. Each type has a normal balance.

Assets — debit-normal

Liabilities — credit-normal

Equity — credit-normal

Revenue — credit-normal

Expenses — debit-normal

Other

The type is set when an account is created. As a matter of accounting practice you should not change an account's type after it has activity, because every posted entry already assumes that type's normal balance — the API does not actively block such a change today, but the result will misclassify your reports. Treat the type as effectively permanent.

See Bookkeeping Concepts (UG-004) → Account Types and Normal Balances for what "normal balance" means.

Account Codes

Account codes are optional, but most businesses use them. A consistent numbering scheme makes the COA much easier to scan.

The conventional ranges are:

You do not have to follow this — Books does not enforce it — but auditors and incoming accountants will appreciate it.

Creating an Account

Steps

• From Accounts, click + New Account
• Fill in: Name — what it is called; Account type — which of the 21 types; Account code — optional but recommended; Currency — defaults to entity base currency; change for foreign-currency cash accounts; Category — optional grouping; Description — free text for context
• Click Save

The account is immediately available for transactions.

What Happens Next

The new account appears in your Chart of Accounts and in every relevant dropdown across Books — line-item account selectors on invoices, the bank-account selector on payments, the matching-account selector on bank transactions, and so on.

Editing an Account

You can change an account's:

• Name — anytime
• Description — anytime
• Category — anytime
• Code — typically anytime, although changing it after transactions exist may confuse coding conventions
• Currency — practically, do not change after any transactions post — there is no automatic re-translation
• Type — practically, do not change after any transactions post — every prior entry assumes the original normal balance

Steps

• Click the account in the list
• Click Edit
• Make changes
• Click Save

Deactivating an Account

You cannot delete an account that has been used in a posted transaction — that would corrupt the audit trail. Instead, you deactivate it. Deactivated accounts:

• Do not appear in dropdowns when creating new transactions
• Still show on historical reports and statements
• Can be re-activated at any time

Steps

• Open the account
• Toggle Active to off (or click Deactivate)
• Confirm

If the account has never been used, you can delete it outright instead — Books will let you.

Account Balance and Statement

Every account has two read-only views:

Balance

Shows the current balance with a breakdown by date or transaction. Useful for checking that the account agrees with an external statement (a bank statement, a credit card statement).

Statement

Shows every transaction that has hit the account, with running balance. This is the equivalent of a bank statement for any account in your books. Use it to:

• Investigate a balance you do not recognize
• Reconcile to an external source
• Hand to your auditor as proof of the activity in an account

Categories

A category is an optional way to group accounts that share a reporting purpose. For example, you might group:

• Office Rent, Internet, Utilities → category "Facilities"
• Salaries, Bonuses, Benefits → category "Payroll"
• Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Trade Shows → category "Marketing"

Categories appear as subheadings on the Income Statement and Balance Sheet, making the report read more like a business summary than a flat list of accounts.

You manage categories from inside the Accounts screen (or the API) — there is no separate top-level Categories page in the current UI.

Presets and Where They Come From

When you set up your entity (or later via Settings → Enable Accounting), you can pick one of three presets:

The preset just seeds your chart on day one. After that, the chart is yours — add, rename, deactivate as needed. There is no link back to the preset; if you upgrade from Basic to Standard later, you do that by adding the missing accounts manually or by re-importing.

If you skipped the preset at setup time, your chart starts empty and you must enable the module from Settings before you can add accounts.

Importing a Chart of Accounts

If you are migrating from another system or have your accountant's preferred chart in a spreadsheet, you can bulk-load it.

Steps

• From Accounts, click Import
• Upload a CSV or XLSX with at least Name and Type columns
• Books detects column headers and lets you map them
• Preview the parsed rows, fix any errors, then click Import

See Data Import (UG-060) for the full column reference and supported formats.

How the Chart Is Used Across Books

Several places in Books pull from the Chart of Accounts:

• Invoices — Line items pick a Revenue account
• Bills — Line items pick an Expense or Asset account
• Payments — Pick the Bank account that received or sent the money
• Bank Transactions — Match to an account when categorizing an unmatched line
• Products — Default Income, Expense, and Asset accounts per product (so invoices auto-fill)
• Customers / Vendors — Default A/R, A/P, and tax accounts
• Manual Bank Accounts — Each manual bank account is backed by a Bank-type account in the COA
• Bank Feeds — Each connected Stripe FC account is mapped to a Bank-type account
• Journal Entries — Pick any account on either side

Because the COA underpins almost everything, keeping it tidy pays dividends every day.

Common Questions

Tips and Best Practices

• Pick a numbering scheme on day one and stick to it. Renumbering later is annoying.
• Don't over-decompose. Twelve expense accounts is plenty for most small businesses; one hundred is too many.
• Use categories instead of inventing 30 sub-accounts. "Office Rent" and "Office Internet" can both live under category "Facilities".
• Deactivate, don't delete, when in doubt. Reactivation is one click; recovery is impossible.
• Coordinate with your accountant before changing types. Once a type has activity, it is locked.
• Mirror what your tax filings expect. If your CPA likes "Travel & Meals" as one line, name yours that way.

Related Guides

• UG-004 — Bookkeeping Concepts
• UG-003 — Setting Up Your Company
• UG-060 — Data Import
• UG-040 — Journal Entries and Transactions
• UG-050 — Financial Reports
• UG-070 — Multi-Currency