Chart of Accounts and Settings

The chart of accounts is the list of accounts your ledger posts to, such as Bank, Accounts Receivable, Sales Revenue, and Rent. Workstation creates a standard chart when you enable Accounting, and most businesses only need to add a few accounts of their own.

All the settings on this page live in Accounting → Accounting settings. They apply to the company selected in the header, and you need the accounting.manage permission to change them. The settings page has these tabs:

Tab	What it holds
General	Start date, precision, allocation, receipt routing, deferred revenue, credit-limit policy, period lock. See Setting up Accounting.
Entities	Companies and groups. See Companies.
Intercompany	Related-company account pairs and elimination journals. See Ledger.
Chart of accounts	The account tree (this page).
Posting defaults	Where payment methods, taxes, discounts, and products post, plus withholding tax categories (this page).
Payment terms	Reusable due-date and installment templates (this page).
Numbering	Document number formats (this page).
Fiscal years	Fiscal calendar and year-end close. See Closing the books.

Chart of accounts

Accounts are arranged in a tree under five root groups: Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, and Expenses. Search by code, name, or purpose, and use Expand all or Collapse all to browse.

There are two kinds of account:

Group accounts organize other accounts. They cannot receive postings.
Posting accounts receive journal lines. Every document line posts to one of these.

Accounts marked System are the ones Workstation posts to automatically, such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Input VAT, Tax Payable, Inventory, Undeposited Funds, FX Gain/Loss, and Retained Earnings. You can rename them, but you cannot move, archive, or delete them, or change their purpose.

Add an account

Click Add account, or Add child on a group.
Enter a unique Code and a Name.
Choose the Parent account. The account takes its type (asset, liability, and so on) from its parent.
Leave Group account clear for a posting account.
Choose an Account purpose. The purpose tells Workstation how the account is used. For example, only accounts with the Bank or Cash purpose appear in payment and banking screens, and only Receivable accounts can be used as an invoice’s Debit To account.
Optionally set Balance must be (debit or credit) to stop the account from going the wrong way, an Account currency, and a description.

Available purposes depend on the type:

Type	Purposes
Asset	Bank, Cash, Receivable, Tax, Inventory, Fixed asset, Accumulated depreciation, Temporary
Liability	Payable, Tax, Temporary
Equity	Equity, Temporary
Income	Income, Temporary
Expense	Cost of goods sold, Depreciation, Expense, Rounding, Temporary

To hold money in another currency, create a posting account with the Bank or Cash purpose and choose its Account currency. See Foreign-currency bank accounts.

Change, archive, or delete an account

Use View ledger on a posting account to open its General ledger.
Once an account has ledger activity, its type, group setting, and currency are fixed.
Archive hides a custom account from pickers while keeping its history. You cannot archive an account that has children or is used in a mapping.
Delete is only possible for a custom account with no ledger activity, children, mappings, or references.
With the audit_logs.view permission, the history icon shows every change to an account.

If you keep books for several companies in one group, adding, renaming, or removing an account applies to every company in that group. Balances stay separate per company.

Posting defaults

The Posting defaults tab controls where amounts post when a document does not say otherwise.

Account mappings

Payment methods. Choose the bank or cash account each payment method posts to. An unmapped custom method uses the mapping of its Category (set under Settings → Finance → Payment Methods); anything still unmapped uses the Cash account.
Tax rates. Choose the liability account each tax rate’s output tax posts to. Unmapped rates use Tax Payable. Tax on bills and expenses (input tax) always posts to Input VAT.
Post discounts separately. When off (the default), sales post net of discounts. When on, sales post at their gross amount and discounts are debited to the Default discount expense account. An invoice or a single line can override the account. Each posted invoice keeps the policy it was posted with, so changing this later does not rewrite history.

Withholding tax

Define the withholding tax categories used on supplier bills: a name, a rate, and the liability account the withheld amount is credited to. See Withholding tax.

Product and category defaults

Choose accounts for a product category or an individual product: Sales income, Sales returns, Purchase expense, Sales discount, Inventory asset, Cost of goods sold, and Deferred revenue liability.

The most specific setting wins: product, then category, then the company default. Each document saves the accounts it resolved when it is posted, so changing a default later does not change posted documents.

Payment terms

Payment terms decide a document’s due date, and can split it into installments.

Workstation includes standard templates: Due on receipt, Net 7, Net 15, Net 30, Net 45, Net 60, and End of month. They cannot be edited or archived.

To create an installment schedule, click New template. For example, “50% now, 50% in 30 days”:

Label	Portion %	Due from	Days
Deposit	50	Document date	0
Balance	50	Document date	30

Installments must add up to exactly 100%. Due from can be the document date, the end of the document month, or a month end after it.

Which template a new invoice or bill uses:

The template chosen on the document.
The customer’s or supplier’s default, set on their Accounting tab.
The Organization default on this tab.
Due on receipt.

The template and the generated installments are copied onto the document when the draft is saved, so editing a template never changes existing documents. The document’s due date is its last installment. Choose Custom due date on a document when no template fits.

Installments show up in Payments (automatic allocation pays the earliest installment first) and in aging reports, where each unpaid installment sits in its own bucket.

Document numbering

The Numbering tab sets how each accounting document is numbered. Each type has its own sequence:

Document	Default prefix
Invoice	INV
Credit note	CN
Bill	BILL
Vendor credit	VC
Payment	PAY
Expense	EXP
Journal entry	JE
Landed cost	LCV
Bank deposit	DEP
Asset disposal	AD
Prepaid expense	PRE
Period closing voucher	PCV
Stock adjustment	SA
Stock transfer	ST

Click Edit to change the Prefix, Next number, Number length, and Sequence reset (never, each calendar year, or each fiscal year). The preview shows the next number.

A few rules keep numbers trustworthy:

Changes apply to new documents only.
The next number can move forward, never backward.
Cancelled and voided numbers stay used.
Invoice and credit-note numbering is locked while ZATCA is connected or once an invoice has been submitted.
A supplier’s own invoice number goes in the bill’s Reference field, separate from your bill number.

Chart of Accounts and Settings