# Introduction - Accounts Chart

The accounts chart is the list of buckets every transaction in SorviAI Finance eventually lands in.

**Video coming soon:** How the accounts chart is organised, and what every document posts into.

Every invoice line, bill, payment and adjustment posts to one. It is the backbone of your reporting, and it is worth ten minutes of thought before you have a thousand transactions sitting in it.

![The Accounts Chart screen listing forty-three accounts with columns for Account Name, Account Code, Type, Documents, Parent Account Name and Include in VAT Return. Sub-accounts such as Checking Account and Savings Account are indented under Bank Accounts, and a padlock marks the accounts the system owns. A filter above the table is set to Active Accounts.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/accounts-chart/accounts-chart-list.png)

*Codes order the chart, the parent column nests it, and the padlock marks what you cannot remove.*

## How deep to go

The most common mistake is too many accounts. Every extra account is a decision someone has to make correctly on every transaction, forever. If you will never make a different decision because of a split, do not split it.

**Fewer accounts** (Recommended starting point)

- Yes: Faster and more consistent coding
- Yes: Readable reports
- Yes: Easy to split later if you need to
- No: Less detail without running a breakdown

**Many accounts** (Usually regretted)

- Yes: Fine-grained detail on the face of the report
- No: More miscoding, so the detail is unreliable
- No: Reports nobody reads to the end
- No: Merging accounts later is painful

> **Tip:**
>
> **Use the reports, not the chart, for detail**
>
> Wanting to know spend per supplier is not a reason for an account per supplier. Sales by Customer and Purchases by Vendor already answer that from one account each.

## System accounts

Some accounts are wired into how the product posts, and they cannot be deleted. You can usually rename them, but what they do is fixed.

| Account | Posted to by |
| --- | --- |
| Accounts Receivable | Every invoice and customer payment |
| Accounts Payable | Every bill and vendor payment |
| Tax control | Tax on every transaction, and tax payments |
| Inventory | Purchase receives, shipments and adjustments |
| Exchange gain or loss | Realised and unrealised currency differences |
| Opening balance equity | Balances brought in when you started |

> **Warning:**
>
> **Do not post journals to control accounts**
>
> A manual journal into receivables or payables makes your ledger disagree with your ageing reports, with nothing to explain the gap. Use the customer or vendor document instead.