Your chart of accounts is the list of accounts your bookkeeping is organized around — your revenue accounts, expense accounts, assets, liabilities, and equity. In Mercury Books, these are called Ledger accounts. When you categorize a transaction in Books, you're selecting a ledger account from your chart of accounts.
How your chart of accounts gets created
During setup you either choose a Books template or import your own chart of accounts as a CSV.
To see your chart of accounts, go to Chart of Accounts in the left-hand menu of Books.
Reading the page
Each row is a ledger account with:
- An ledger code — the number used to sort and group accounts, like 1000 for assets or 4000 for revenue
- A ledger account — what you'll see in the category dropdown when you categorize a transaction
- A type — asset, liability, equity, revenue, or expense, which determines where the account appears on your reports
- An opening balance, the beginning balance of the account on your Books start date where one applies
Every Books accounts includes a set of system ledger accounts that can’t be deleted.
Making changes
Adding, renaming, and removing individual accounts is straightforward.
To add an account:
- In Books, go to Chart of Accounts
- Click the Add ledger account button
- Enter the ledger code, name, and type
- Click to save
To rename or edit an account, click the row to open it, make your change, and save. Renaming an account updates it everywhere, including on transactions already categorized to it and on past reports.
To delete a ledger account, open it and click the delete. .
Note: An account can't be deleted if it has any line entries posted to it. If you see "Can not delete ledger with line entries," recategorize the transactions to a different account first, then delete it.
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