But what does FS mean?
FS stands for financial statements, balance sheet, income statement (+nota integrativa, CF statement).
In Italy we have “legal” rules (only) for the lines of the financial statements but the rules change depending on activity/sector/industry and size of the company.
Then I do not understand this:
If there is a group that provides some kind of standard chart of account, I think it should be used instead of defining our own chart.
The size is not really a problem, it could be divided into a minimal and extended like in account_es or some account could be closed by default.
As far as what we have seen, there’s not even a standard de facto chart of account in Italy. All the charts we found look different:
- The one provided by our customer
- The one created by datalife
- The one in Odoo
- Others found in the Internet
That’s why we concluded that it’s better that the account_it module provides account types and taxes and let each company use their preferred chart of accounts.
What are the sources of suchs charts? We need to search for the source of suchs chart to see it’s correctness.
BTW: Is there some standard accounts that can be reused somewhere? Maybe we can reuse the minium part of all charts and let the users customize.
I completly agree with Cedric here. After some time of maintaning the account_es chart of account I will say that adding several options for the same country it’s something that can be easly managed.
@albert you appropriately mentioned odoo.
Odoo offers a COA template (derived from community) in 184 accounts: it doesn’t reflect codice civile but it’s somewhat similar to that.
I have been working as consultant for several odoo implementers, in my opinion it’s not a perfect solution but hardly ever a company asks for more convergence with codice civile.
It’s far more frequent to be asked to comply whith the habits of the advisor!
In my work with @wifasoi I tried ho get a more compact and general solution at the same time with only 110 accounts, it’s not so far from codice has similarities with it, but it’s made to be used.
In general I think that the purpose of a CoA is the same of the purpose of accounting: to produce financial information, that’s not simply to gather data for the annual financial statements or VAT return and anyway should be clear, lean, simple…
In Italy, as a matter of fact, the CoA is free and there’s not a standard (like in other countries).
As a consultant I tend not to appreciate a lot advisors who ask me to make a CoA just like a copy-and-paste of codice civile, anyway even accepting this, by looking just of the size that format would concern roughly just the 9-10% of the italian businesses (source: fondazione commercialisti).
After all I think that, in the spirit of an OS community, you should adopt the most efficient solution independently from who makes or suggests it, codice civile, habits and rules… The judgment should be professional, and experience should be relevant.
If you find a better one adopt that! 
Why you want to have a compact CoA? Which is the benefits of gaving less accounts?
On the Spanish chart we have more than 750 accounts ready to be used and most accountants only use them when needed. They come from the legislation and anyone can create any subaccount if required.
I will prefer to have a more complete solution where all the accounts are already there when needed and no manual configuration is needed. Configuring a chart of accounts manually is a hard work and a mistake on the configuration can produce wrong reporting. I’ve seen several instalations with had wrong reports because accounts where created wrongly. The objective of a COA template is to avoid this issues.
Having said that, Tryton allows to deactivate accounts and override part of the template. So it will be also possible to hide some accounts if you prefer to not have them (despite I do not think it’s usefull)
I don’t have the full professional qualification to judge this CoA (in particular for the compliance whith spanish rules).
I think I have the professional qualification to judge if an italian CoA is a good or bad one.
Compact solutions minimize manual configuration.
Could you give me some examples of wrong report or account create wrongly in an italian environment?
Does the copy-paste of civil code guarantee the correctness of an accounting report in Italy?
As I explained copying the civil code is not a complete solution.
I do not understand the logic. If you have a complete solution than there is no manual configuration at all which is what we want.
What is it missing? But more importantly where could we find it?
You can find several charts of accounts online. The problem is that each one is different, and all of them may be totally valid.
We could create a default chart but the problem is that it may be useful for companies recently created (though @marco is saying that this is not the case, so sure he knows better) but existing ones will probably prefer to continue with their own chart.
And of course you’ll find common or very similar accounts if you compare the Odoo, Datalife, and other charts you find online (most companies manage mostly the same concepts – just like french and spanish charts of accounts don’t are not so different) but the thing is that each one will have their own hierarchy and codes.
I think you can find the Civil Code here.
However, I have the impression that there’s some misunderstanding, please @marco, correct me if I’m wrong.
I think that the Codice Civile does not propose any chart of accounts at all. What it does impose are the profit and loss and balance reports. Please follow the links to find their official content.
One possibility is to create a chart of accounts that creates one account for each profit and loss and balance concept defined in 2424 and 2425 articles. And that would “work”.
However, I guess that when @marco is saying that “copying the civil code is not a complete solution” he is saying that it is not a good idea to use the concepts in those 2424 and 2425 articles to create the chart of accounts.
This is not a valid argument. We do not care about companies that are not going to use the standard module.
We must focus on provide a good solution for most usage (if possible all).
I doubt that there are not a (or many) de-facto standard chart of account published by a private organization (if the state does not provide one).
I can not believe that for each company in Italy an accountant has created a tailored chart of account.
What we know so far is that there’s no “most usage” solution.
How can “many” be de-facto standard? There can be one or few de-facto standards. But not many, otherwise those are not standards.
What @marco stated is that each accountant uses their own. So yes, probably several companies (those who share the same accountant share a very similar chart). And probably one accountant copied from another one.
But he also stated that if we decide for one such chart it’s going to be useful for at most 10% of potential users.
So I guess one solution is use one chart of accounts, and let +90% of companies change it from scratch so they can reuse the account types and taxes. Not sure it’s worth it, but it is one possibility.
BTW, a quick search allows you to find several example charts.
Exactly, as I said they are rules for the lines of financial statements.
Of course it would work, maybe a spanish or belgian CoA would work too 
.
In that solution there would be lines with no usage for most of the company and lines to add for most of the companies
I just stated that although codice civile is the standard format for IS-BS only -roughly- the 10% of the company is concerned, for specific rules and dimensional reasons.
But at the same time for that 10% we would have the manual configuration and actual usage I described above.
I guess that an italian accountant could imagine that such a CoA would have been made by some belgian or spanish IT guy googling the internet to create an italian CoA. 
This is expected on any char of accounts.
I think we should focus on searching a chart of accounts published by some organizations and try to the follow one that provides a more complete structure. @marco did you have know any?
If you prefer we may have the option to select this chart or to select one with just the statements and the minimal required accounts.
Serious question: will be correct to use IFRS account structure adapted to Italian reporting?
Yes, I was also thinking that if we do require the account_it module to have accounts, then we could create just the bare minimum.
On contrary we must create a full chart of account. There is no point to provide a minimal.
OK so let’s go for that. We do not care to have unused account.
What is IS-BS?
IS: Income Statement
BS: Balance Sheet
Given that core devs prefer a complete chart, I think this is a good proposal.