Chart Of Accounts and Roots Type

Hi All, I want To create my Own Root Type and my own chart of Accounts How???

First you have to delete all the accounts from existing chart of accounts. And then from Chart of Accounts page, create your own chart.
But currently Root Type is not configurable, it is limited to “Asset”, “Liability”, “Equity”, “Income” and “Expense”. And root type is tightly integrated with the code, so any new type can create problems.

1 Like

Is there any plans to added additional root accounts to the chart of accounts
eg Cost of Sales
This would allow the gross profit/margin to be calculated within the P&L report.

I note it can be done in an adhoc way with the use of cost centres, however, that is not an optimum solution.

Some accounting standards have this as a reporting option.

Am interested to know under which IFRS article does this come. For academic purpose only. Thank you.

For Root Types - You can choose Add an account with a Root Type of

  • Asset
  • Liability
  • Equity
  • Income
  • Expense

To get a root type Account, Click on the Top of the Chart of Accounts Tree (Company Name) and Choose Add Child. At Account Entry, Click Is Group and you can choose the Root Type

You can actually have several Asset Roots, etc.

For me, A use case was, the Company was shifting to a new Chart of Accounts.
So, I prefixed the previous 5 Root Type Accounts with the number 8
Previously, I prefixed the 5 Root Type Accounts of ERPNext with the number 9.
Then, I typed (actually imported using Data Import - Excel) the new Chart of Accounts with Asset starting with 100, Liability - 200, Equity 300, Income - 400, Expense - 500 accdg to the new Chart of Accounts.
Then, we simply changed the Parents of the Non-Group Account. Voila - New Chart of Accounts, without retraining.

Your Cost of Goods should have a parent whose root type is Expense

1 Like

as Countries adopt there own standards, usually based on international standards the answer should probably be two parts in a simplistic form. now that is assuming the standard(s) apply to the reporting entity. firstly IAS1 and then a specific country, eg Australia AASB101 which includes a modification.

option 1
Revenue
Other income
Changes in inventories of finished goods and work in progress
Raw materials and consumables used
Employee benefits expense
Depreciation and amortisation expense
Other expenses
Total expenses
Profit before tax

option 2
Revenue
Cost of sales
Gross profit
Other income
Distribution costs
Administrative expenses
Other expenses
Profit before tax

having the parent child relationship of Expense > COGS was not the desired accounting outcome,
it was:

  • Asset
    
  • Liability
    
  • Equity
    
  • Income
    
  • COGS
    
  • Expense
    

however my experience is the reporting setup can be more complex under this type of scenario

Thanks for your interest, however, the answer is not really relevant to my initial question.
For the interest of anyone else that may search this topic I will clarify.
Currently when a standard chart of accounts, with or without numbers, is activated the primary root accounts are fixed programically/coded from my understanding and testing.
These root accounts are:

  • Asset
  • Liability
  • Equity
  • Income
  • Expense

The ERPnext forms (program) does not provide a method to use a supplied form to add to this list of root accounts. i.e. you can only become a child of one of the fixed root accounts, which are the parent/group account.

As I mentioned thanks for your interest, however the coments are not relevant to the question.
I will stay on topic thanks.

I am not sure I really understood your issue. But these five roots will be the normal account roots.you can have the cogs seperate. But the root of that will be expense. Right? So instead of income and expenses, you will have income, cogs & expense as heading in your p&l report. You can upload chart of accounts to have this.

I think what is meant here is how to produce Financial Statement Reports, which can be done by coding query_reports with this structure.

Accounting-wise these are the root types (note that they are not necessarily the root accounts). First 3 are for Balance Sheet and the last 2 are for Profit/Loss Statement. Anyone (or any country) may have other names but they are the root types.

Anyway, if one wants other names than those 5, maybe can use custom translation to rename them.
Or maybe for reports, we can arrange to only display 2nd-level accounts?

Yes, but account type should be at account level not at first parent level, in my country we use different account grouping so parent folder not necessary have common account type for all its childs. Now parent folder enforce the account type to all its child, which not valid in my place.

1 Like

How is that grouping different than available in ERPNext?

For example we have a group name called third parties includes suppliers, customers and gov accounts, you can see asset accounts and liability are together in the same group.

Is it by law to group that way?

Because every business would have supplier, customer, and third parties.
Usually they are grouped under their purpose: suppliers under payable, customer under receivable, etc.
Also a possibility is to have other third party giving loan so it will be grouped under liabilities; or that you get interest from bank account so you group the bank under Other Income; etc.

My original questions was to enquire if there was plans to allow additional root accounts by way of standard function within the package.
For example some accounting packages allow a gross margin to be calculated within the P&L.
It was looking for any alternative to having COGS directly under expenses.

Yes this grouping is imposed by gov.

Same in my country, Spain. Trying to figure out what to do, though I’m still a newbie, so … I’ll keep looking.

I have a workaround contact me for details on whats app 0021692389677