Your chart of accounts is the list of accounts Trac uses to organize the money side of your portfolio — the buckets that activity is recorded against so your books stay balanced and your reports add up. Every activity posts to these accounts, so a well-organized chart of accounts is what makes the general ledger and the balance-sheet / income-statement views accurate.

This guide explains how to reach the chart-of-accounts screen, how it’s organized, and how to add, edit, and remove accounts and books.

If you only record simple transactions and don’t use the Structured model, you can skip this — Trac sets up sensible default accounts for you and you rarely need to touch them.

How to reach the screen#

The chart of accounts lives on the General Ledger screen, on its Books tab. That tab is the chart-of-accounts manager — it’s the one place to set up and edit your accounts. (You won’t find it under Configurations; the General Ledger tab is the single source of truth so there’s never a second, diverging copy.)

This is a web app screen. There’s no chart of accounts in the Trac mobile app, and Traci can’t write chart-of-accounts entries from the phone either — it will show you what it worked out and leave the change for a computer.

The General Ledger screen has two tabs:

• Books — your chart of accounts, organized by book. This is where you manage accounts.
• Recent Activity — a running ledger of the postings from the last 90 days for the selected book, with debit and credit columns. Tap any row to open the underlying activity.

The rest of this guide is about the Books tab.

How the chart of accounts is organized#

Books#

A book is a self-contained set of accounting records — its own complete chart of accounts. Most portfolios need only one, but you can keep several (for example, one per legal entity) and switch between them.

Across the top of the Books tab is a row of book pills. Tap one to show that book’s accounts. You may also see a Default (or No Book) pill: it collects any accounts that haven’t been assigned to a specific book yet. A pill marked (Template) is a reusable starting point rather than a live book.

Account types#

Every account has a type that says what kind of thing it tracks. Each book is organized under five built-in root groups, one per type:

These five roots are created and maintained for you. They’re marked as managed by the system, so you can’t rename, retype, or delete them — but you add all of your own accounts underneath them.

Groups and posting accounts#

Each account is one of two kinds:

• A Group is a folder. It doesn’t hold activity itself; it organizes the accounts beneath it and shows the rolled-up total of everything inside. The five root groups are groups, and you can nest your own groups as deep as you like.
• A Posting account is a leaf — an actual account that activity is recorded against, with its own balance.

On the screen, groups appear as slightly raised cards you can expand and collapse; tap a group to open it. The balance shown on a group is the pure sum of the posting accounts inside it, so the leaves always add up to their group.

An account’s parent must be a group of the same type in the same book — for example, a posting account of type Asset has to sit under an Asset group. Trac keeps these rules consistent for you as you build the hierarchy.

Find an account#

The search box at the top of the Books tab filters the current book’s accounts as you type. It matches on an account’s name, its ID, its number, and its description, and it automatically keeps (and expands) the parent groups of any match so you can see where each result sits in the hierarchy. Clear the search to return to the full tree.

Add an account#

1. Open the ⋯ (more) menu at the top right of the Books tab and choose Add Account. (To add an account directly inside a specific group, expand that group and use its Add Child Account action instead — Trac pre-fills the parent, type, and book for you.)
2. Fill in the form:
   • Name — what the account is called. (Required.)
   • COA Number — an optional account number (digits only). Numbers control the sort order within a group and show in front of the name, like 1000 - Cash.
   • Description and Notes — optional free text.
   • Roles — optional tags that let Trac’s statistics recognize an account’s purpose (for example cash_account or fee). Pick from the suggestions or type your own. You usually only need these for custom statistics.
   • Book — which book the account belongs to. Use Create New to make a new book without leaving the form.
   • Kind — Group (a folder) or Posting (records activity).
   • Type — Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue, or Expense. (Required.)
   • Parent Ledger — the group this account sits under. The list only shows groups of the same type in the same book.
   • Unclassified Account — see below.
3. Tap Save. Trac checks that the ID is unique and that the account fits the hierarchy rules (right parent type, same book, no loops), then adds it.

The ID field is filled in automatically and can’t be edited — it’s the stable identifier Trac uses behind the scenes.

Edit an account#

Tap an account’s Edit (pencil) action to reopen the same form with its values filled in. Change what you need and Save.

The five system root groups can’t be edited; their controls are turned off and they have no Edit action.

Delete an account#

You can delete an account from its Delete (trash) action, or from Delete in its ⋯ menu. Trac asks you to confirm first.

Deleting is deliberately limited so you can’t break your books:

• Group folders and the five system roots can’t be deleted here. To remove a group, first move or remove the accounts inside it.
• A posting account can only be deleted while it has no activity. Once anything has posted to an account, its Delete action goes away — that history has to stay attached to a real account. (The one exception is an account left pointing at a holding that no longer exists, which you’re allowed to clean up.)

To see what has posted to an account before you remove it, use View Postings (the eye icon, or View Postings in the ⋯ menu). It lists every posting on that account; for a group, it rolls up the postings of everything inside.

Unclassified accounts#

The Unclassified Account switch marks an account as the book’s catch-all. When Trac records activity that it can’t fully classify — for example, the leftover side of an imported transaction that has no obvious counterpart — it parks the amount in the unclassified account so the books still balance. The idea is to work that balance back down to zero over time by reclassifying the entries.

Each book can have at most one unclassified account; Trac won’t let you flag a second one in the same book.

Work with books#

The ⋯ menu on the Books tab also manages whole books:

• Add Book — create a new book. You can start it from a template (a built-in chart of accounts, or a copy of one of your existing books); either way Trac seeds the five required root groups so the new book is ready to use.
• Edit Current Book — rename the selected book, set its base currency, or change its status. Editing the Default scope turns it into a real, named book and moves your unassigned accounts onto it.
• Duplicate — copy the selected book, including its whole chart of accounts, into a new book.

Deleting a book (from within the Edit Book form) removes the book and its accounts together. Trac blocks this when the book still has postings or hand-made accounts, so you can’t orphan live activity — clear or reassign that activity first.

How this connects to activities#

The chart of accounts is the backbone of the Structured transaction model. When you record an activity, each line (a “posting”) debits or credits one of these accounts, and the event has to balance — total debits equal total credits. Because every posting points at an account here:

• account balances on the Books tab reflect the activities that posted to them,
• the Recent Activity tab and the general-ledger views read straight from these accounts, and
• the roles you tag accounts with let Trac’s statistics group and total your activity correctly.

So the time you spend organizing your chart of accounts pays off everywhere your structured activity is summarized.