Keeping the Chart of Accounts Consistent

Avoid future account-structure issues by keeping the chart of accounts consistent!

This cannot be emphasized enough, as a huge percentage of upload issues happen on the second round, when clients upload a new set of sheets that has some level of fundamental changes from the first round.

When we say "consistent", here's what we mean: think of parent accounts and sub-accounts like folders and files on your computer. Just like your computer knows "where" your files are based on the precise string of folders that leads to them, so too CFO Scoreboard understands "where" an account belongs in the chart of accounts by looking at what parent accounts lead to it. For example:

Month 1 P&L

• Ordinary Income / Expense
  • Income
    • Direct Sales
    • Reseller Revenue
    • Miscellaneous Income

Easy enough, right? Let's say this is what the first part of the P&L looked like when a customer first uploaded. Then let's imagine in month 2 they uploaded something like this:

Month 2 P&L

• Ordinary Income / Expense
  • Revenue
    • Direct Sales
    • Reseller Revenue
    • Miscellaneous Income

See how the second line changed? That's going to throw CFO Scoreboard off the trail! Since the parent account has changed, it's going to think that all those child accounts are new line items in Month 2, rather than properly connecting them with the same accounts in Month 1.

CFO Scoreboard tries to "unify" all charts of accounts into one consolidated hierarchy

When CFO Scoreboard loads up the Month 2 data, it will attempt to consolidate both months together into one "unified" chart of accounts. It would look something like this on the Trends page:

Hopefully the problem here is obvious! Because the hierarchy changed, CFO Scoreboard assumed these accounts were unrelated. The optics from this data will be bad, and the results of future uploads will be unpredictable.

The moral of the story is: keep your parent accounts consistent over time!

Meanwhile it is just fine if you or your client wants to add new accounts into the list over time -- obviously businesses change with time, so that will be necessary! It is no problem at all to add a new account -- just make sure the account is inserted into the right part of the hierarchy, and CFO Scoreboard should deal with it just fine. The real issue here is not concerned with making new additions, but making inappropriate changes to hierarchy that has already been supplied.

For clarification, here's a short video that outlines how you'd solve this situation: