HomeHelpAccountingChart of Accounts

Chart of Accounts

Auto-seeded standard chart, the five account types and 1xxx-6xxx numbering, adding accounts, and the delete/deactivate rule.

AccountantFinance ManagerSuper AdminLast reviewed 03 Aug 2026

Was this article helpful?

Related Articles

Journal Entries

Balanced entries, approval controls, linked-source limits, retained reversals and how journals affect financial reports.

Bank Reconciliation

Review matched and unmatched bank items, mark a reconciliation complete and have a Finance Manager approve it.

VAT Returns

VAT Management: current-month output and input VAT, the VAT201 and SARS eFiling exports, and marking a period submitted.

Next

Journal Entries

The Chart of Accounts is the list of every account your business uses to record financial transactions. Open it from Accounting > Transactions > Chart of Accounts. The screen is available to the Accountant, Accountant Admin and Super Admin roles.

The Standard Chart Is Created For You

The first time the page loads with no accounts, TravelFlow seeds a standard South African travel-agency chart automatically and confirms how many accounts it created. You do not have to build the chart from scratch.

Account Types and Numbering

Every account has one of five types: asset, liability, equity, revenue or expense. The seeded chart uses these numbering ranges:

  • 1xxx — Assets. Cash, bank accounts, accounts receivable (1200), prepaid expenses, fixed assets.
  • 2xxx — Liabilities. Accounts payable (2000), VAT payable, payroll liabilities, customer deposits, loans.
  • 3xxx — Equity. Owner's equity and retained earnings (3900).
  • 4xxx — Revenue. Flight, hotel, car rental, package and consulting revenue, commission income (4050), other income (4900).
  • 5xxx — Cost of sales. Direct supplier costs for flights, hotels and car rentals. These accounts have the type expense and carry the category label “Cost of Goods Sold”; cost of sales is not a separate account type.
  • 6xxx — Operating expenses. Salaries, rent, marketing, depreciation (6800), bank charges (6900), interest expense (6910).

The numbering ranges are a convention of the seeded chart, not a rule the system enforces. Nothing stops you creating a revenue account numbered 8000, and no validation checks the range you use.

Adding an Account

Click Add Account in the page header (or Add First Account when the chart is empty) and complete the form:

  1. Account Code (required) — the account number, for example 1150.
  2. Account Name (required) — a short descriptive name.
  3. Account Type — Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue or Expense.
  4. Normal Balance — Debit or Credit.
  5. Tax Related Account — a tick box you set for VAT-relevant accounts.
  6. Description — optional free text.

There is no parent-account field. The form has no hierarchy setting, so accounts are created as a flat list.

Edit Account opens the account in the same form and saving it updates that account; it never creates a second record.

Deleting and Deactivating

Deleting an account is a soft delete: the record is marked inactive rather than removed, so history is preserved. If any transaction references the account code, the delete is refused with “Cannot delete account with N transactions. Deactivate instead.” Note that the page shows “Account deleted successfully” even when the service refused the delete, so refresh the list to confirm the account actually disappeared.

Importing and Exporting

Import Accounts on this page opens the import dialog: download the template, choose a CSV or XLSX file, check the preview, then import. The dialog only creates new accounts; a code already in your chart is refused for that row. A parent code links an account to its parent, which must be in your chart or in the same file, in any order. To update existing accounts' names, use Accounting > Transactions > Data Import with the entity type Chart of Accounts. See the Importing Data article.

Export Chart of Accounts in the Quick Actions panel does work: it downloads a CSV of code, name, type and balance for every account on screen.

Tip: The Account Balances Summary and the balance column show the balance value stored on each account record. Posting a transaction does not currently write back to that field, so use the trial balance and the other financial reports for period figures rather than the balances shown here.