Set Up and Browse the Chart of Accounts

The chart of accounts is the named list of every account your books use — Cash, Accounts Receivable, Outpatient Revenue, Salary Expense, and so on — arranged as a tree. Every posting in Veona lands in one of these accounts, so this is the backbone of the ledger. Most of it is created for you at provisioning as a country pack; you browse it here and extend it where your facility needs more detail.

Who / when: the Accountant (and the Finance Manager) maintain the chart; the Auditor can read it but changes nothing. You will spend time here when you first set the books up, and occasionally afterwards when you need a new account.

We will follow Tunde the finance officer, who wants to add a dedicated revenue account for the new physiotherapy service.

A few terms first

• Root type — the top-level family an account belongs to: Asset, Liability, Equity, Income or Expense. It decides how the account behaves in the statements.
• Account type — a finer classification within the root (for example Bank, Receivable, Stock, Depreciation), used by the subledgers and reports.
• Group account vs postable account — a group (header) account only organises the tree; you cannot post to it. A postable (leaf) account is one you can actually post entries against. Every real transaction hits a postable account.
• Parent — the group account a node sits under. Leaves hang off groups; groups can nest under other groups.

Browse the chart

1. Accountant — open Finance & Ledger → Chart Of Accounts. Veona shows the live account tree, indented by depth: group headers in bold, postable leaves beneath them. Each row shows the account code, its root type, its account type, and a Kind tag — Group, Posting or Disabled.

2. Accountant — click any account name to open its detail and drill into every ledger entry that has hit it (covered in Read the General Ledger and Drill Any Account). Use Back to return to the tree — there is no separate menu entry for an account’s detail.

Note

A fresh facility’s chart is seeded as a country pack at provisioning — Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya or South Africa — each in its own base currency. You usually start from a complete, sensible chart and only add to it.

Add a postable account

3. Accountant — press New Account (top right). A dialog opens.

4. Accountant — fill in:

   • Account Code — your code for the account (for example 4150).
   • Account Name — the human name (for example Physiotherapy Revenue).
   • Root Type — here, Income.
   • Account Type — the finer type; for a revenue account, leave it at the closest match.
   • Leave the Group / Header Account toggle off — this is a real, postable account.
   • Parent (Group) Account — search for and pick the income group it should sit under (for example your Revenue header). Only group accounts can be chosen as a parent; the picker is a searchable list, never free text.

5. Accountant — press Create Account. Veona saves it and the tree refreshes with the new leaf in place under its parent.

Add a group (header)

6. Accountant — to organise a new branch instead, press New Account, give it a code and name, choose its root type, and turn the Group / Header Account toggle on. A group cannot receive postings; it just holds children. You can also press Add Child on any existing group row to create an account already parented to it.

Edit an account

7. Accountant — press Edit on any row to rename it, change its account type or parent, or Disable it. A disabled account stays in the tree for history but accepts no new postings.

Caution

The accounts you post automatically against — Accounts Receivable, Revenue, Cash, Bank, Accounts Payable, Cost of Goods Sold, Goods Received Not Invoiced, Depreciation, Retained Earnings, Exchange Gain/Loss — must exist here and be selected in Finance Settings. An account that exists but isn’t mapped is invisible to the subledgers, so their postings will silently skip.

What happens next

With the chart in place, the next step is to make sure each subledger knows which account to use — that is Finance Settings. After that you can post your first manual entry, or simply let the clinical and operational events flow into these accounts on their own, as described in One Set of Books.

Follow the trail

• Previous: One Set of Books — How Money Moves Through Veona
• Next: Post a Manual Journal Entry
• Related: Configure Finance Settings and Account Mappings · Read the General Ledger · Read the Trial Balance