Maintain chart of accounts

After the setup of a company we are required to maintain our chart of accounts. After opening peachtree software we have to click “maintain” from the upper menu and then select “chart of accounts” to establish chart of accounts.

After selecting chart of accounts the following window will appear.

In this window we have to input data of 3 things, account ID, description, and account type.

Account ID.

Account id is the kind of reference number which we give to our accounts. We had to input the account ID quite carefully because it will help us to find our accounts easily. We will number them like all the assets might start from the same number like we give 105 account id to cash and 142 to building both are staring with 1. Then for liabilities we should start from the different number which might be 2 and so on.

Description.

In description we will type the name of the accounts for example: cash, petty cash, a/c payables etc.

Account type.

We had to select the account type from the given options and we have to select it very carefully. Because due to account type we can group all the same kinds of accounts. For example we select the account type “fixed assets” for land, building, leasehold improvements, furniture etc and in this we have grouped it to “fixed assets”.

There are 6 options given in the above window.

Over here “delete” means to delete any of the available account. To delete any existing account we will first click the magnifier or the search icon to open all the existing accounts. The following window will appear after clicking magnifier.

Now we will double click any of the account like I had double clicked “petty cash”. After double clicking it we will click the “delete” icon from the menu. The following window will appear.

From this window we will basically do the confirmation of deletion of account by clicking “yes” otherwise click “no”.

Now I will explain about the “change id” icon given on the menu. After clicking change id the following window will appear.

With the help of change id icon we can simply change the id of accounts which we had given to our accounts like in the above window 109 was the current account id now we will input new account id if we had to change it in any circumstances. Then we will click ok.

Now for doing any account “inactive”.

We will select the “inactive” from the below window to inactive any of the existing account but before it we have to select any existing account by the help of magnifier and after that by selecting “inactive” option we can inactive any of the account.

We inactive any account when we know that no further no more transactions will be associated with it. 

this was all the basic and important information about how to maintain chart of accounts.
after maintaining chart of accounts we will click close on the menu.

How to input beginning balances.

After maintaining  chart of accounts we have to enter the amounts of beginning balances. For this we have to click on short arrow given beside “beginning balances” shown in the following picture:

After clicking on this arrow the following window will appear:

Note:

Firstly we should know that before clicking “beginning balance” the account of “retained earnings” should be there otherwise the software will not save balances and we have to restart doing work from first step.

While we can create any new account in this also except the account of “retained earnings”.

From here we will select the time period of our beginning balances. This time period is selected according to the occurrence of our balances or when these accounts were closed. Fro example if the trial balance is on 31^st dec 2013 this means that the entries were closed on 31^st dec 2013 so we will select the slot from 12/1/13 through 12/31/2013.

After clicking on the desired time period the following window will appear.

In this window account ID, account description and account type columns will be shown which we had entered while maintaining chart of accounts. While the data of column “assets, expenses and liabilities,equity,income” we had to enter. Like shown in the picture the data is eneterd. And in case we had entered wrong data or our data is not balance the new account will be created automatically with the name of “beg bal equity” and in this account the difference will be posted.  

We can also enter new account over here by clicking on the “new” icon in the above window.

After entering the data we will click on “OK” icon and the above window will be closed automatically.