The account structure your accountant would build

The chart is read straight from the ledger, and nothing on the screen changes a balance — figures move only when a sale, purchase, payment or settlement posts. That division of labour is the design: the chart describes, the documents act, and Setup decides what posts where.

Each account carries its type and sub-type — Asset, Liability, Equity, Income, Expense, then the narrower bucket — which is what routes it to the right statement: assets, liabilities and equity to the balance sheet, income and expenses to P&L.

Some accounts are load-bearing and the product treats them so. Receivables is money real customers owe — on a marketplace business it should sit at zero, because the buyer paid the marketplace. Clearing accounts hold money that is real but not yet banked, and should rise and fall, not just rise. Tax payable runs one account per tax actually levied, so a combined rate splits to the government that owns each half.

The unmapped holding account is a deliberate complaint: anything landing there had no rule to follow and was parked visibly rather than guessed at. It should trend to zero; a balance is the prompt to add the missing rule.

Accounts deactivate rather than delete: an inactive account keeps its history and balance but is hidden from new postings. Deleting would orphan the entries that reference it — so the product does not offer the mistake.

Add accounts when a real category of money has nowhere sensible to go, and resist one per supplier or customer — that is what contacts are for, and it keeps the statements readable.

For businesses keeping QuickBooks Desktop alongside, these accounts are the ones that must exist there too — the bridge matches the chart name for name, and an account with no QuickBooks name cannot receive a journal. Add an account in one place and let the bridge copy it, rather than hand-typing it twice with different spellings, which is the most common cause of a failed sync.

That penny-verified bridge is what lets an accountant keep their QuickBooks workflow while the business runs on SeroBooks.