The chart comes before the company — transcript

Presentation 2 of 8 in Set up a new company end to end · about 11 minutes · for the whole-system operator — you run the books.

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This lesson is for you if you are about to click Create Company and have just discovered the field that will not let you past: Chart of Account. Fifteen minutes of decisions here shape every financial statement GadgetSphere ever produces, and one of them is expensive to undo. About eleven minutes.

Step 1 — Understand why the chart is first

After this step you will stop trying to create the company first. Create Company has a required Chart of Account field, and there is a plus button beside it that will make a chart coded DEFAULT for you if none exists. That button is a convenience with a consequence, which the next step covers. The dependency runs one way only: the chart can exist without a company, but the company cannot be saved without a chart. Everything that maps the two together — the codes that decide where a sale lands, the ledgers, the fiscal year — comes afterwards, because none of it can be mapped until the company record is there to map it to.

Reference: Organization — Before you can use it

Step 2 — Know what a new chart actually contains

After this step you will never again be surprised by two hundred accounts you did not create. Creating a chart is not creating an empty chart. BigLedger seeds every new one with a built-in template: eighteen GL sections, fifty-three categories beneath them, and two hundred GL codes carrying numeric account numbers. Open the GL Code listing on a chart you made a minute ago and they are all there. They are perfectly usable accounts. They are simply not yours, and for a retail group with twenty-eight bank accounts they are not going to be enough on their own either.

Screen: Chart of Account applet, GL Code listing, immediately after a chart is created — two hundred GL codes nobody keyed, each a word-like code with a six-digit account number

Reference: Chart of Account — The built-in template

Step 3 — Choose: adopt the template codes, or set them aside

After this step GadgetSphere has one decision recorded and no ambiguity. You have two honest options. Adopt the template codes and rename them to match the chart you are migrating from, or build your own codes alongside and set the template codes you do not want to inactive. GadgetSphere takes the second route, because the template’s codes are words, such as cash draws, with a six-digit account number beside them, and follow no convention its staff will recognise. Know the limit of that route before you take it: inactive codes leave the GL Code listing and the journal-line drop-down, but the item-level GL picker on sales and purchase lines does not filter on status, so it still offers them. Brief whoever maintains items on which codes are actually yours.

Reference: Chart of Accounts Setup Guide — Step 1: Confirm the company and the chart it carries

Step 4 — Never create a second chart to start clean

After this step you will have avoided the most expensive mistake in this lesson. It is a natural instinct: the first chart is cluttered, so make a fresh one. Every chart you create seeds another two hundred codes, so a second chart doubles the clutter rather than clearing it. Worse, sections are shared across charts anyway — the template reuses any section whose code already exists, so the new chart is not a clean slate in the one dimension that matters to the financial statements. One chart per company is the shape to keep, and the cleanup tool for codes you regret is inactivation, or GL Code Merge where history has to move with them.

Reference: Chart of Accounts Setup Guide — Step 1: Confirm the company and the chart it carries

Step 5 — Leave the section codes alone

After this step your profit and loss will actually close. The eighteen GL sections are BigLedger’s, not yours. Month-end looks at the section code on every balance and closes eleven of them into profit and loss; everything else is carried forward onto the balance sheet. The balance sheet’s retained-earnings line reads one specific section code as well. You may rename a section for display, and you should never change its code or invent a section of your own. The classic symptom of ignoring this is rent and wages sitting on the balance sheet after month-end, because somebody created a friendly-sounding section called Operating Expenses and the close does not recognise it.

Reference: Use the built-in GL sections and set up your categories and codes — Step 2: Learn the 19 GL Sections — and leave their codes alone

Step 6 — Link every category to a section before you go on

After this step nothing you have built can vanish from a statement. Every report query joins GL code to category to section, and the join is an inner one. A category with no section link takes its GL codes out of every financial statement and out of month-end itself, while still appearing perfectly normal in the GL Category listing. So walk the Chart of Account tree once, before you map anything to the company, and confirm each category is sitting under a section. It is a short check and worth making now, because the symptom — a balance that is simply absent rather than wrong — is one of the hardest things in the product to trace backwards.

Reference: Use the built-in GL sections and set up your categories and codes — Step 4: Check the tree — every category under its section

Step 7 — Get the code right the first time, because fixing it costs twice

After this step you will check your import file before you upload it. The import never renames a code, but the GL Code screen’s Edit does. If you import a cash code with a capital letter O where a zero belongs, you have two ways out. Correct it on Edit, where the postings follow the account, and correct the file you keep at the same time, because the renamed code no longer matches it. Or set the wrong code inactive and import the corrected one alongside it, leaving a dead account in the chart. Re-importing is not a third way: an import row whose code already exists does not fail, it updates that code’s name, category and description in place. That is genuinely useful for fixing names in bulk, and dangerous on the day one of your codes collides with a template code by accident.

Reference: Use the built-in GL sections and set up your categories and codes — Step 5: Bulk import your GL Codes

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Understand why the chart is first"]
  s2["Step 2 — Know what a new chart actually contains"]
  s3["Step 3 — Choose: adopt the template codes, or set them aside"]
  s4["Step 4 — Never create a second chart to start clean"]
  s5["Step 5 — Leave the section codes alone"]
  s6["Step 6 — Link every category to a section before you go on"]
  s7["Step 7 — Get the code right the first time, because fixing it costs twice"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  s6 --> s7

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

1. What does BigLedger put into a brand-new chart of accounts? Nothing — a new chart is empty until you import your own codes
A built-in template: 18 sections, 53 categories and 200 GL codes, each a word-like code with a six-digit account number
Only the 18 sections, with no categories or codes beneath them

2. The template codes are cluttering your GL Code listing. What should you do? Create a second, clean chart and assign the company to that one
Delete the template codes you do not need
Set the unused template codes to inactive, and keep one chart per company

3. Rent and wages are still on the balance sheet after month-end. What is the likely cause? Their category is linked to an invented section whose code the close does not recognise
The fiscal period was locked before month-end ran
The expense codes were created after the fiscal year opened

4. A GL category has no section link. Where do its balances appear? On the trial balance but not the profit and loss
Nowhere — every report query inner-joins code to category to section, so its codes disappear from every statement and from month-end
Under an "Unclassified" heading at the foot of the balance sheet

5. You typed a GL code wrongly and it is already saved. What can you do? Nothing — a GL code can never be changed once saved
Re-import the file with the corrected code, which renames the old one
Correct it on the GL Code screen's Edit and in your file together, or set it inactive and import the corrected one

Answer key

A built-in template: 18 sections, 53 categories and 200 GL codes, each a word-like code with a six-digit account number — Chart of Accounts Setup Guide — Step 1: Confirm the company and the chart it carries
Set the unused template codes to inactive, and keep one chart per company — Chart of Accounts Setup Guide — Step 1: Confirm the company and the chart it carries
Their category is linked to an invented section whose code the close does not recognise — Use the built-in GL sections and set up your categories and codes — Step 2: Learn the 19 GL Sections — and leave their codes alone
Nowhere — every report query inner-joins code to category to section, so its codes disappear from every statement and from month-end — Financial Report — Before you can use it
Correct it on the GL Code screen's Edit and in your file together, or set it inactive and import the corrected one — Use the built-in GL sections and set up your categories and codes — Step 5: Bulk import your GL Codes

This is a self-check. Your answers are marked in your browser and stay there — nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is recorded, and the marking is readable in the page source, so it is not a credential. Open the answer key at any time.

Next: Create the company, and what comes with it · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation

Last updated on October 27, 2026

The chart comes before the company Create the company, and what comes with it