I have a massive chart of accounts, how can I search?

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Tue Apr 19 12:20:16 EDT 2016


Hi,

Graham Lane <grahamlane at gmail.com> writes:

> I have 6 top accounts but some of them have multiple subtrees. I just exported
> to CSV and there are 295 accounts, some are empty and will get deleted or
> hidden which will help.  Many of our contributions (incomes) apply to specific
> activities or programs, some are restricted assets, others liabilities, some
> are just plain old income.  95% of what we do with a non profit is not taxable
> income but some of it is and that requires income and expense categories for
> for both types.  We need to keep very good track of this stuff to comply with
> our funders requirements.
> G

For what it's worth, my personal account tree has 486 accounts..

So what exactly is so unwieldly?  Keeping your accounts in hierarchies
is exactly what you should be doing.  Just make sure they are logical to
you.

Note that when you're entering transactions there are keyboard shortcuts
to handle your account hierarchies.  I.e. you can type:

  E x : U t : E l

to get to Expenses:Utilities:Electricity

-derek

> On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 11:27 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>     trythis <grahamlane at gmail.com> writes:
>    
>     > I am dealing with a massive chart of accounts and sometimes finding the
>     right
>     > account takes a long time.  Is there a way to search the accounts page?
>     > Sorry if I missed something obvious. /
>     > Thanks.
>    
>     Have you tried structuring your account tree to make it easier to find
>     accounts?  My top-level CoA only has 5 accounts.  Then each tree is
>     branched out.  The largest single place in my tree is the first
>     sub-level of "Expenses", but since I rarely really look in that subtree
>     it's not a big deal to me.  I just keep that part compacted; my whole
>     CoA that I leave open fits onto just over one visible "page".
>    
>     > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>     > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available



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