Chart of accounts news and documentation

As we explained in Localization Round Table at Openbravo Get Together in Barcelona, Openbravo has been working hard on enhancing the chart of accounts support and its processes in the Openbravo ERP R2.3x release series.

We have been working with a consultancy company to identify which areas of Openbravo ERP could be enhanced, which documentation needed to be created, and finally, to produce a verified chart of accounts for United States.

Let me summarize the main results of these efforts:

What is new in Openbravo ERP R2.3x (regarding chart of accounts):

· The number of default accounts was reduced to 30, cleaning all the accounts that were defined but not used and verifying that the accounts left were used properly in the different parts of the application.

· Operands. Starting with Openbravo R2.35 it is no longer necessary to define the operands for accounts in the application. They can be defined in the chart of accounts directly. In R2.35 the operands of operators should be defined before using the operand. In the next version, it would be possible to use them in any place.

· The Initial Client Setup process has been revised making it more robust. It has been divided in different phases and it generates a very detailed report when importing the chart of accounts. This report helps to detect potential errors in the chart of accounts.

Chart of accounts

· The Chart of Accounts for United States has been simplified. It went from 300 to 100 accounts and it now builds correctly the balance sheet and the account of results. This is the chart of accounts that we recommend as example for people building chart of accounts in countries with similar account systems to United States, like Venezuela.

· The chart of accounts for Spain has also been enhanced to include the operands needed and to avoid having to define them in the application.

Testing the chart of accounts

We have created a testing process for Chart of Accounts that verifies that the chart of account is correct and that it builds the balance sheet correctly. We are encouraging all localizers to perform these tests in their chart of accounts.

Also we have been working on extending the documentation for the Chart of Accounts including a full description of all the accounts.

New chart of accounts for Openbravo R2.35

Starting with Openbravo R2.35, all the chart of accounts published at SourceForge are guaranteed to have passed the tests 1 and 2 in of our chart of accounts testing procedure. Right now, we have published the verified chart of accounts for United States, South Africa and Romania. We are working working with many contributors to verify and update the rest of chart of accounts.

We hope that all of these changes will easy the process of localizing Openbravo ERP to the different account systems. If you have questions, suggestions or doubts do not hesitate to use our Translations & Localizations forum.