Create or edit a ledger account

Summary

How to create and edit a category in Accounting Start.

Resolution

Create and edit ledger accounts and discover what each of the fields are for.

Ledger accounts can also be known as nominal accounts or nominal codes.

If you've come from another system such as Sage 50, you may want toimport your ledger accounts. You can only do this when no transactions have been entered in Sage Accounting.

What are categories

We use categories to group your transactions so you can see how your business is performing.

Each category has a Group and Category that determines how transactions are reported on your Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet reports.

Some categories are used automatically by Accounting Start when recording transactions to ensure that items such as your VAT are recorded correctly. These are known as control accounts and can't be edited. Control accounts are marked with an asterisk.

Create a category

From More, then Business Settings, choose Chart of Accounts.
Select New category.
Enter the details and Save. The fields marked with asterisk * are mandatory.

Edit a category

You can change the details of a category.

Change the type:

Changes how the values are included on your reports.
Does not update transactions that are already entered.

Change the category name:

From Chart of Accounts, select the category you want to edit.
Edit the Ledger Name to change how the category displays in the Chart of Accounts.
Edit the Display Name to change how the category displays in the rest of the program.

Delete a category

Once a category is created, it cannot be deleted.

If you no longer want to use a category, then exclude it from the chart of accounts. This removes it from selection lists when creating transactions.

You cannot exclude control accounts (indicated with an asterisk) from the chart of accounts.

Click More, then Business Settings, Chart of Accounts.
Open the relevant category.
Clear the Included in Chart check box.
Click Save.

Category fields

If you're not sure what all the fields are for, here is an explanation:

Types and Groups

Each category has a type and group.

This is used to group categories together and make sure they are reported correctly on your profit and loss and balance sheet reports.

Profit and loss

Group	Type	Description
Income	Sales	Income from the things you sell
Income	Other income	Other sources of income
Expenditure	Direct expenses	Costs directly related to things you sell such as packaging, labour charges, import duty etc.
Expenditure	Overheads	Other costs such as staff wages, utility bills, business expenses etc.

Balance sheet

Group	Type	Description
Asset	Bank	Balance of your bank accounts and credit cards
	Fixed assets	Value of your assets such as your property, any equipment you own, any company cars or other vehicles
	Current assets	Value of your stock and the amount owed to you by your customers
Liability	Current Liability	Amount you owe to creditors such as the total amount owed to your suppliers, amount owed to HMRC for VAT and PAYE
Capital	Equity	Any capital bought into the business such as your profit (or loss)

Nominal codes

This is a number you can use to help you find and sort your categories.

You can use any number that suits you. By default we have used the following numbers.

Assets = 0001 – 1999
Liabilities = 2000 – 2999
Capital = 3000 – 3999
Income = 4000 – 4999
Expenditure – Direct expenses = 5000 – 5999
Expenditure – Overheads = 6000 – 9999

VAT rate

Set a default VAT rate on categories, to help make sure transactions are entered with the correct VAT rate.

When the category is selected, the VAT rate set on the category is entered automatically. You can change the VAT on each transaction.

This is useful when transactions recorded against a particular category, use the same VAT rate most of time. For example, your sales are likely to be charged at the standard VAT rate so setting a default on the your sales categories may be useful.

Where VAT is not required for particular categories, just choose No VAT.

Visibility

To help reduce errors, we've set up categories so they can only be selected on certain types of transaction.

For example, sales categories can be selected on sales transactions.

The visibility check boxes determine which transactions the categories can be used for.

Choose the most appropriate one for you business. All categories are available on journals and reports.

If you can't see a ledger account, check the visibility setting.

Errors creating categories

If you see the following error:

Sorry about this – It looks like we’re experiencing a technical problem.

Check the following:

Make sure you are not trying to use a nominal code that already exists
Make sure that Bank is not selected under Visibility. Only categories with a type as Bank can also have their Visibility set to Bank

If you are trying to set a Current Asset with a code greater then 1300, it may give you a technical error. If this occurs, choose a different type (we recommend Bank) and Save, then go back in and edit the category to change the type back to Current Asset and Save again.