This COA reflects all pertinent IFRS and US GAAP guidance ⚠.
IFRS | US GAAP provides recognition, measurement and disclosure (reporting) guidance. Unlike the advanced chart of accounts, this COA focuses on both recognition guidance as well as measurement guidance. Reporting and disclosure, however, are entity specific tasks whereby the accounts are either mapped to the financial statements (either in aggregated or disaggregated form) and serve as the basis for additional, footnote and other disclosures.
A more detailed discussion of the COA's role and function is provided on the introduction page.
This standardized COA may be used for dual reporting purposes.
However, adjustments will be necessary.
While comparable, IFRS and US GAAP are not identical. It is thus not reasonable to run the generate IFRS statements | GAAP statements script (downloadable on this page) on the same trial balance and expect results fully compliant with IFRS and US GAAP for both iterations.
The illustrative example section discusses and illustrates the most pertinent differences between IFRS and US GAAP.
This standardized COA is also suitable for private entities without an IFRS | US GAAP reporting obligation.
However, if used as a basis for tax reporting, adequate adjustments reflecting the specific tax laws of each particular jurisdiction will be necessary.
This COA may also be used for managerial or intracompany accounting purposes. However, it was not designed with this aim in mind. Consequently, it will need to be adjusted to serve this purpose.
Important!
This COA is designed to be easily and infinitely expandable. However, adding entity-specific information such as profit center, customer type, geographic location, etc. will make the account structure bloated and, eventually, unusable.
For example:
Instead, the optimal solution is to employ a robust ERP system that allows this information to be added as additional dimensions, leaving the basic COA structure intact.
Optimally, this ERP system should also support attributes where the core accounts serve recognition purposes with attributes capturing additional information such as measurement basis or currency of denomination.
Likewise, individual items, for example individual automobiles or machine tools, have no place being included on a chart of accounts. Instead they should be kept in dedicated subledgers specifically designed for this purpose.
This issue is explored in more depth on the implementation page.
Activate to download this COA in digital format.
A COA may be incorporated into reporting structure in many ways. Nevertheless, Excel remains the lingua franca of accounting.
On the other hand, some ERP implementation professionals require data structured as CSV or TSV. To accommodate this requirement, read this.
First, ensure you have a functioning version of Python with the Pandas and Openpyxl libraries installed. Next, download the zip file that contains the script Excel-to-CSV.zip. Place both the COA and the script into the same folder. Rename the COA exactly Excel-TSV-Input.xlsx and run the script.
To convert the TSV back, simply copy Excel-TSV-Output.csv to Excel and use the Text to Columns function. Leave the delimiter set to the default Tab. Please be aware, this will strip all formatting, so the Depth column is critical for retaining COA's hierarchy.
Pro view includes additional scripts illustrating how to generate a dynamic hierarchical COA from an Excel source file. It also includes scripts to map the output to balance sheet and P&L in IFRS or US GAAP format (also in Excel).
Also see the implementation guidance on this page.
