What a good chart of accounts does
The chart of accounts is the list of buckets every transaction lands in. It decides what your profit and loss and balance sheet can tell you. A good one is small enough that categorizing a bank feed is quick, and specific enough that the reports answer real questions: how much did we spend on contractors, what does shipping cost us, how much sales tax do we owe?
A few rules keep it useful as the business grows:
- One account per question you'll ask. If you'll never look at "Postage" separately from "Office supplies", don't create both.
- Balance sheet accounts mirror real things: each bank account, each credit card and each loan gets its own account, so you can reconcile it against a statement.
- Income accounts follow how you sell, by product line or service, not by customer. Use customers and classes for the rest.
- Avoid "Miscellaneous". It grows until it's the biggest expense on the report and nobody knows what's in it.
The industry starter lists
Every list shares a common base: checking and savings, receivables, undeposited funds, fixed assets with accumulated depreciation, payables, a credit card, sales tax and payroll liabilities, owner's equity and draws, and the usual operating expenses. Each industry then adds what it needs:
- Professional services: consulting and retainer income, reimbursed expenses, subcontractors.
- Retail and e-commerce: inventory, product sales, shipping income, refunds, cost of goods sold, fulfillment, payment processing and marketplace fees.
- Restaurants: food and beverage inventory and sales, catering, food and beverage costs, kitchen labor, tips payable, delivery platform fees.
- Construction and trades: contract and change order income, job materials, subcontractors, equipment rental, permits, retainage receivable and payable, tools and vehicles.
- Rental real estate: buildings and land, mortgage, security deposits held, rental income and late fees, management fees, property taxes, HOA dues.
Types and detail types
QuickBooks groups accounts by type (Bank, Fixed Assets, Income, Expenses…), which decides where the account appears on reports, and by detail type, a finer label used in some reports and tax mappings. The CSV uses QuickBooks Online's names for both. The IIF file converts each type to its QuickBooks Desktop code (BANK, FIXASSET, INC, EXP and so on); Desktop doesn't use detail types.
Before importing into an existing company file
- Export the current chart of accounts from QuickBooks and compare it with this list. Delete rows here for accounts that already exist under another name.
- Fix every highlighted row: QuickBooks rejects duplicate names.
- Back up the company file (Desktop) before importing an IIF. IIF imports can't be undone in one step.