Chart of Accounts Review Checklist

Pull the COA from QuickBooks Online, Xero, or Sage Intacct as a CSV with account number, name, type, detail type, parent account, and YTD activity. Attach to this step so the rest of the review references a frozen snapshot rather than a moving target.

Pick up open items from the last review — accounts flagged for consolidation that never got merged, naming-convention inconsistencies, deferred renumbering. Don't rediscover them from scratch.

Framework drives presentation (GAAP vs. IFRS — current/non-current splits, inventory cost methods, leases). Entity type drives the tax-line mapping target — 1120, 1120-S, 1065, or Schedule C all roll different accounts to different lines.

Standard ranges: 1000s assets, 2000s liabilities, 3000s equity, 4000s revenue, 5000s COGS, 6000s-8000s expenses, 9000s other income/expense. Confirm the client's convention and flag any account whose number doesn't match its type.

QBO supports up to 5 levels but anything past 3 hurts reporting. Flag deep nests where a class, location, or tag would do the job — that's the most common reason a COA balloons past 800 accounts.

An expense account numbered in the 1000s, an asset in the 6000s — these creep in when staff create accounts on the fly. List each mismatch in the cleanup workpaper for renumbering.

Confirm current vs. non-current splits — accounts receivable, prepaid expenses, and current portion of long-term debt all need correct subtype tags. A loan posted as Other Current Liability when it's a 5-year note distorts working capital metrics.

Direct costs belong in 5000s COGS, not in 6000s overhead. Common gotcha: contractor labor billed to clients sitting in Subcontractor Expense (overhead) instead of Direct Labor (COGS). Gross margin is wrong until this is fixed.

In QBO, each account has a tax-line mapping field that flows to UltraTax, Lacerte, or ProConnect. Unmapped or wrong mappings make tax season manual. Walk the export and confirm every income statement account ties to the correct line on the entity's form.

IFRS requires separate presentation for items GAAP allows to be combined — investment property vs. PP&E, biological assets, intangibles distinct from goodwill, finance vs. operating lease liabilities under IFRS 16. Confirm the COA supports the disclosure detail required.

Sort the export alphabetically and look for variations: "Office Supplies" / "Office Supply" / "Supplies - Office". Each duplicate splits a real expense and breaks year-over-year comparability. Pick the survivor and queue the others for merge.

Pull a transaction-by-account report for the trailing 24 months. Accounts with zero activity are inactivation candidates — but check first that they're not legitimate seasonal or one-off accounts the client expects to use again.

In QBO, mark inactive rather than deleting — inactivation preserves historical transactions while removing the account from new-entry pickers. Document each inactivation in the change log with the date and the bookkeeper's name.

The Ask My Accountant suspense account should be empty at year-end. Pull every line, identify the correct GL account, and reclass via journal entry. If the suspense pattern is recurring, the bank-feed rules need work — flag for the staff training step.

Six separate Meals accounts (Client Meals, Travel Meals, Office Meals, Holiday Meals…) usually want to be one Meals & Entertainment account with a class or tag. Consolidation simplifies close and tax prep without losing the slice-and-dice the client cares about.

For every renumber, merge, inactivation, and tax-line remap: record the before state, the after state, and why. Attach the workpaper here. Future-you reviewing next year will thank present-you.

Append this review's changes to the running log kept in the client folder. The log is what you reference when a partner asks why an account vanished mid-year, and what the auditor wants to see if the client moves to a review or audit engagement.

Walk staff through the renamed accounts, the consolidated buckets, and the bank-feed rule updates that go with them. Without this, the same fragmentation pattern returns within a quarter.

Partner reviews the change log, the rationale workpaper, and the post-review COA export. Approval here is the gate before changes are applied in the live GL — once accounts are merged, undoing is painful.