Many thanks everyone for the replies. @pocock The rules for NI really just follow the pre Brexit rules for goods so at the minute I just complete VAT exactly the same way as I always did. Where the differences occur is in services and they just follow the same rules as the rest of the UK as NI Protocol only extends goods not services.
Here’s how Sage 50 categorises VAT for ROI:
https://ie-kb.sage.com/portal/app/portlets/results/viewsolution.jsp?solutionid=200427112324941
And here’s the UK version:
https://gb-kb.sage.com/portal/app/portlets/results/viewsolution.jsp?solutionid=200427112155761
As you can see because it’s VAT there is a level of commonality but enough difference to mean two separate charts are needed.
I’m not wholly sure on the Isle of Man. They are their own country but they were not like the Channel Islands where they were outside of VAT pre Brexit. As it is the Northern Ireland Protocol and therefore no mention of the Isle of Man in that name my guess is that much of rules for GB will apply to the Isle of Man but don’t hold me to that.
@dave I think you’ve done a great job in putting that mammoth chart of accounts together and I can see it is based on the sample charts from Companies Law then I think it is about as good as you will get as a standard because no standard really exists. You really only have to provide a true and fair view in the required financial statements following accepted accounting standards. For me personally a chart of accounts for a business should reflect management desires for information that is relevant to them rather than what is required for financial reporting. The Financial Accountant will adjust the reports to comply with financial reporting requirements in any case. Having said that in the absence of any standards other than financial reporting standards it seems as reasonable a choice as any.
XSL transforms sounds very interesting. If they were fairly simple to set then I can see it being used in all sorts of useful ways to provide accounts more relevant to specific business types (sole trader, partnership, limited liability partnership or limited liability company) and business sector based structures (online retail, manufacturer, etc). The reason that is useful is that for the like of my own business costs that would generally be in overheads are actually direct costs ie post & packing, website fees, eBay fees, PayPal & card payment fees, etc therefore they will fall within cost of sales or cost of goods sold rather than outside Gross Profits and I don’t need things like raw material, work in progress, finished materials, etc that a manufacturer would need. I realise you can set particular accounts to ended to deactivate them but can you move an account easily once it has been imported ie moving all those overhead accounts under direct expenses?
I’m not proposing we get bogged down in any of that now but if we set a structure that would support that then I could see that providing a way to make accounts more relevant over time.
Is there a way to view the chart of accounts like a nested a list of accounts so I can easily see them because reading the XML and understanding that structure is not easy. If I know what to do I can probably get there. I could just import the module into Tryton and view it in there but not sure if there is a better way to do that.
Apologies for the length of that.