Lesson #2 - The Chart of Accounts/Profit and Loss Accounts

Notice :  Please see this important update before trying to follow any of the steps described here.

This page should get you through the preparation of a chart of accounts in OpenERP, according to the examples provided in "Hour 2" of  Alpha Teach Yourself Accounting in 24 Hours.  Hereafter referred to as TYAi24H

If you have not yet done so, please review Lessons #0 and #1.  They will explain the course and get you setup and ready to work with the special tools I've created to make your work go faster.

To understand this section you'll need to:

1. read "Hour 2" of TYAi24H.
2. read the OpenERP book, section 8.5.1 Configuring Accounts, which you can find in the online documentation here...

http://doc.openerp.com/v6.0/book/1/1_3_Real_Case/1_3_Real_Case_db_setup.html#configuring-accounts

If you completed Lesson #1 with no difficulty, you should also be able to do the work of this one with no difficulty.  You will spend the bulk of your time reading TYAi24H.

If you are like me you won't read the whole chapter in any case; not yet any way.  I use it more as a reference to see the pattern of structure.  When the time comes to work on a real world case, then I'll need it to get at some of the smaller details of the pattern.  Nor will I rely on it alone, these are also very helpful:
http://www.dwmbeancounter.com/tutorial/coabal.html
http://www.dwmbeancounter.com/tutorial/coaincome.html


The task this time...
As explained yesterday, Hour 1 and Hour 2 deal with the same topic: the Chart of Accounts.  TYAi24H divides the problem into two parts, according to the data requirements for the two primordial management reports:

1. Balance Sheet - code range 1000 - 3999
2. Profit and Loss Statement - code range 4000 - 6999

I tried to do a good job with the Balance Sheet half, giving it a better structure with View types as OpenERP encourages.  I have not tried nearly so hard with the second half.  One reason is that I do not yet know how necessary it is -- it's just an example after all.  The other is that I have made a working assumption that neither book will use them much .  We'll see.

Here are the Selenium scripts to use for this lesson ...
https://github.com/martinhbramwell/SeleniumForOpenERP/tree/master/ChartOfAccounts_ProfitAndLossStatement

As before you'll see that I used a 5-digit numbering system in order to make room for properly placed View type accounts.