What is a chart of accounts?
Asked by Ryland B.
Answer
By Ryland Beard, founder of Switchbooks · October 27, 2026
A chart of accounts is the list of every category your books use, grouped by type. Each transaction is filed to one of them, and every report is built from those totals.
The types fall into two groups. Assets, liabilities and equity are the balance sheet accounts: what the business owns, what it owes and what belongs to the owners. Revenue, cost of goods sold, expenses, other revenue and other expenses are the Profit and Loss accounts: what came in and what it cost over a period.
A good chart is short and fits how you run the business. A coffee shop wants coffee and food costs on separate lines; a consultant does not. With too many categories, nobody files the same thing the same way twice.
In Switchbooks the chart lives on the Categories page, built on those eight types. Switch can set up a whole chart in one step in the chat, or you can bring yours over from QuickBooks Online.