Building and Maintaining a Standardized Chart of Accounts

A well-designed and well-maintained Chart of Accounts (COA) enables consistency and accuracy in reporting, provides structure for managing global business in a uniform way, and can scale up as the organization grows. Designing or maintaining the COA in a haphazard way, by contrast, can lead to numerous accounting inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and errors along with inevitable frustration for the CFO and the finance function. This article describes five essential practices for building and maintaining a COA that avoids these pitfalls to keep accounting activities running smoothly.