Chart of Accounts: Setting Up the Account Structure

Build your account tree in five types — asset, liability, equity, revenue and expense — add sub-accounts under a parent, and disable accounts instead of deleting ones already used.

The Chart of Accounts is the skeleton of your bookkeeping: every journal entry, invoice and bill is posted against one of these accounts. Docklify organises accounts as a tree in five types — asset, liability, equity, revenue and expense — and you set the whole structure up on one page: Accounting → Chart of Accounts (/accounting/accounts). Do this once, before you start posting, and the reports that build on it stay consistent.

Step 1: Open the account tree#

1. Go to Accounting → Chart of Accounts. The page loads the full tree, expanded, with one row per account.
2. Read each row by its columns: Code, Name, Type and Status (Active or Inactive). Sub-accounts appear nested under their parent account.
3. Use the tree to check your structure before adding anything: which top-level accounts exist per type, and where a new account belongs.

• Asset — what the company owns, such as cash, bank balances and receivables.
• Liability — what the company owes, such as payables and loans. Equity — the owners’ share. Revenue — income from sales and services. Expense — day-to-day operating costs.

Step 2: Create an account#

1. Click New account at the top right of Accounting → Chart of Accounts.
2. Fill in Code and Name — both are required. Pick the Type (asset, liability, equity, revenue or expense).
3. To make it a sub-account, pick a Parent account. The parent list only offers top-level accounts of the same type you selected, so a revenue account can never end up under an asset parent.
4. Leave the Active switch on for a normal account, then click Save. The new account appears in the tree right away.

Docklify keeps the tree tidy for you on this page: the list always opens fully expanded, and the parent picker filters itself by type — two small touches that stop the most common structure mistakes before they happen. The same account tree is what the journal entry form offers when you post, so what you build here is exactly what bookkeepers pick from later (Accounting → Journals).

Step 3: Edit an account#

1. Find the row in the tree and click Edit on the right.
2. Change the Name or switch Active on/off, then Save.

Two fields are locked once an account exists: Code and Type. That is deliberate — journal entries already posted refer to the account, and quietly changing its code or type would rewrite history. If you picked the wrong type, deactivate the account and create a new one with the right type instead.

Step 4: Deactivate instead of deleting#

• Delete is offered on every row, but an account already used by journal entries cannot be deleted — the page says so up front. Deactivate it instead: open Edit and turn the Active switch off.
• An inactive account stays in the tree with an Inactive tag, so old entries still read correctly, but it should no longer be picked for new posting.
• Deleting a never-used account is fine: click Delete and confirm. The row disappears from the tree.

How the accounts are used afterwards#

Once the tree is in place, the rest of Accounting builds on it. Journal entries pick accounts from this tree; AR invoices and AP bills post against it; and the financial reports group their numbers by these accounts and types. Keeping the tree clean — right types, sensible parents, dead accounts deactivated — is what makes month-end reports come out right the first time.

Docklify features used in this article#

• Account tree, fully expanded — Accounting → Chart of Accounts (/accounting/accounts)
• New account with code, type and type-filtered parent picker — Accounting → Chart of Accounts → New account
• Edit name and Active switch, with code and type locked — Accounting → Chart of Accounts → Edit
• Journal entries that post against these accounts — Accounting → Journals
• Financial reports grouped by account and type — Accounting → Reports