How to open an accountكيفية فتح حساب

Opening an account is the most common thing anyone does in Libra. This guide walks the whole cycle and explains every field on the Chart of accounts details form. For what the chart of accounts is and how its numbering works, read The chart of accounts first.

1. Open the screen and pick the parent

From the left menu, open Chart of accounts. Find the account your new one belongs under - open the branch, or type in the filter row beneath the Number column to jump to it.

Before going further, check the parent is still allowed to take children: if anything has already been posted on it, it can never become a parent. Guide 04's parent/child rule explains what to do when it has.

With the parent selected, click New in the ribbon. (Edit opens the same form for an account that already exists.)

2. Number, currency and length

• Number - the account's number and its position in the tree at the same time: an account that sits under 411 starts with 411. It cannot be changed once the account is saved, so get it right now.
• Currency - the unlabelled dropdown to the right of the number. It sets the account's default currency, LBP or USD. Left empty, the account follows the company's own default currency.
• Length - how many digits the number has, which is the same as how deep the account sits. You do not type it: it fills itself in as soon as you enter the number. 41111 gives a length of 5.

3. Description and Latin description

Every account carries two names - Description in Arabic and Latin description in Latin letters. They are what you search by, and what prints on invoices, vouchers and reports; you choose which language a document shows, so fill both in properly rather than leaving one blank.

4. Category

Leave it empty. Category exists for Saudi Arabia, where accounts carry an extra classification. It is not used in Lebanon, which is why the list opens with nothing in it.

5. VAT, Fixed and PID

Three checkboxes, and each one changes how the account behaves for the rest of its life.

• VAT - tick it if VAT passes over this account. This is exactly what separates 41111 Ordinary Clients from 41112 Clients Non VAT, and it is what makes a VAT return come out right.
• Fixed - locks the account to the currency chosen above:
  • currency set and Fixed ticked → only that currency can be posted.
  • currency set, Fixed clear → that currency comes up by default, but others are still accepted.
  • currency left empty → the company's default currency is used and the account accepts either.
• PID - tick it if the account carries auxiliary records (clients, suppliers, employees, banks). With PID on, nothing can be posted to the account without naming an auxiliary; with it off, auxiliaries cannot be used on it at all.

PID freezes after the first posting. Once one entry has gone through the account - with or without an auxiliary - the setting can no longer be changed. Decide before you start working.

6. Force cost center usage

Three boxes - Projects, Sections and Operations. Tick one and the account can no longer be posted without a cost center of that kind, which is how you guarantee that every amount on this account is charged to a project. Leave them clear if you are not using cost centers.

7. Balance sheet information

This block tells the reports what kind of account this is.

• Off balance - tick it for an off-balance-sheet account.
• Provision - for a provision account.
• First exception / Second exception - used with depreciation handling.
• Assets · Liabilities · Both · Income · Expenses · Fixed assets · Depreciation - the account's nature. The trial balance, the balance sheet and the income statement are all built on this setting. On the Lebanese plan every account already ships set correctly, so leave it as it is unless you are building a chart from scratch for another country.
• Depreciation - the depreciation rate, for a fixed-asset account. It can be left empty and set from the asset's own file instead.

8. Mapped to → Plan

Leave it empty. Plan picks another account out of the chart; it belongs to fixed-asset setup, where it ties an asset account to the account its depreciation is posted on.

9. Save

Click Save at the top of the form - Cancel closes it without keeping anything. The account appears in the tree straight away.

What you cannot change afterwards

Three things freeze, and all three are regular support calls:

Next: Suppliers - the auxiliary records that sit on the accounts you have just opened.