Chart of Accounts Builder

Answer questions about how your business actually runs, and get a chart of accounts built around it. The account string, the departments, and a workbook you can hand your bookkeeper.

Open the Builder

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, no signup, no email required. Your chart downloads as an Excel workbook and as import files for your accounting system.

The Problem

Most charts of accounts were never designed. They accumulated.

You know the symptoms:

Nobody can say where a cost belongs, so the same expense lands in three different accounts depending on who coded it.
Somebody needed a new account and took the next free number. Two years later the departmental P&L is unreadable.
Gross margin is whatever fell into cost of goods sold, which makes it impossible to tell a good month from a bad one.
A buyer or a lender asks a question and the answer takes a week and a spreadsheet.

A chart of accounts is a design decision. So we built the tool we use.

What's Inside

Built around your business, not a generic template.

Four industry packs. Home services and the trades, software and SaaS, professional services, and route-based B2B services. The first question decides everything below it.
A real account string. Company, division, department, account, and sub-account, with the ranges earmarked so the next account you add has an obvious home.
Every account explains itself. What it is for and, more importantly, what it excludes. The excludes clause is what actually stops miscoding.
Departments that roll up correctly. Sales and marketing together, product and engineering together, delivery in cost of revenue where it belongs.
Your naming, not ours. Rename any account, and name your entities, divisions, and departments. Both names ship in every file, so the mapping back is never lost.
Bring your existing chart. Drop in a CSV and see where every account you have lands in the new one, and why.

What You Get

A workbook, and imports for your system.

An Excel workbook with a live PivotTable of the chart by department, a Read Me, the segment definitions, and every account with its description.
A QuickBooks Online import CSV, in the column order QBO expects, with types and detail types already set.
A flat CSV and a JSON file for anything else, including NetSuite, Intacct, Acumatica, and Xero.

Free to use, yours to keep. No signup.

Honest Limits

What this is, and what it is not.

This is a starting chart, built for an owner-operated company on the accrual basis, anywhere from pre-revenue to about $100M.
It is not tax advice and not an audit opinion. Founders Finance Group is an advisory firm.
Have your accountant review it before importing, and never import over a chart that already carries transactions without a plan for the existing balances.
Add-backs are handled the way they should be: real costs in real accounts, with the items that are only a portion of a normal account listed separately as normalization items rather than pretending to be accounts.

Ready to start?

Open the live tool, or download the kit and host your own copy. No signup, no cost, no backend.

Open the Builder

A starting chart of accounts, not legal, tax, or accounting advice, and not a system of record. Founders Finance Group is an advisory firm. Have your accountant review the chart before importing it, and never import over a ledger that already carries transactions without a plan for the existing balances.