Chart of accounts
Page: Settings → Chart of Accounts
Your accounts, tracking categories and where each cost code posts, in Xero's own terms. With Xero connected, Xero is the source of truth: Base keeps a copy, and any change you or the assistant suggest waits on the Changes tab until an admin approves it, then goes to Xero. Without Xero, this is your chart and edits apply at once. Four tabs: Accounts, Tracking, Cost codes → accounts and Changes. It is for the admin and for the accountant or bookkeeper you invite as one.
- You must be an organisation admin. The page redirects anyone else. An accountant or bookkeeper can be invited as an admin team member to approve changes.
- Xero connected, if you want the chart read from Xero. Press Refresh from Xero to read the chart and tracking again.
- Cost codes exist (Settings → Cost Codes); the mapping tab is empty without them.
On Accounts, search by code, name or type, and tick Show archived to see archived ones. Each row shows the code, name, type, tax rate and what uses it (a default account slot, or how many cost codes).
- To change one, press Edit, alter the code, name or tax rate, and press Propose (Save when Xero is not connected). System accounts cannot be edited.
- To retire one, press Archive and confirm. The confirm names what uses it. Xero keeps the account's history; Base stops offering it.
- To add one, fill in Add an account — a code of up to 10 letters or digits, a name, the type and the tax rate — and press Propose account (Add account without Xero).
With Xero connected each of these lands on the Changes tab as a critical change waiting for approval; the row reads Waiting for approval until then.
On Tracking, each of Xero's categories shows its options, which one is used for jobs and which for cost codes. Xero allows two active categories.
- Use for jobs on a category makes new jobs tracked under it.
- Rename and Archive propose the change.
- Add option under a category proposes a new option; a job's option is added on its own the first time a bill goes to Xero.
- Add a tracking category proposes a new one; it is disabled when both slots are in use.
- Track cost codes in Xero too uses the second slot so every bill, purchase order and claim line carries its cost code as well as its job, and bills raised in Xero against a cost-code option come back coded.
Post each cost code to its own account
On Cost codes → accounts, pick the account each cost code's bills and purchase orders post to from the list of cost accounts in the chart. The default is your purchases account, named at the top with how many codes still use it. A mapping to an account the chart does not have, that is archived, or that is not a cost account is flagged in red — bills coded there would be refused. Changes apply to bills sent from now on.
On Changes, what is waiting is split into Critical (new accounts, edits and archives, Xero's last tracking slot, default accounts — one at a time) and Routine (tracking options, cost-code accounts, cost codes). Each change shows what it is, whether it goes to Xero or stays in Base, who suggested it, when, the rationale, and the before → after.
- Press Approve. The change is applied — in Xero when it goes there — and the result is reported. If Xero changed the account since the suggestion, it is marked superseded and nothing is sent. If Xero refused it, the row reads failed with Xero's words and offers Try again.
- Or press Reject, with an optional note for the record.
- Approve routine (N) approves every routine change at once; critical ones stay for you one at a time.
History below lists every decision with its outcome.
Press Review my accounts. The assistant reads your chart against what the business does and suggests what a construction accountant would, as changes waiting for your approval. Last accounts review shows when it last ran, how many it suggested, and any advisories.
- The accounts review runs weekly and files its suggestions on the Changes tab. It never applies anything.
- A job's tracking option is added to Xero on its own the first time a bill for that job goes to Xero.
- The Xero page flags changes waiting for approval with a link here.
- Approving sends the change to Xero straight away. There is no further step.
- Accounts are archived, never deleted.
- Without Xero, there is no approval queue for your own edits: they apply at once. Connect Xero and its chart takes over; anything here it lacks can be suggested to it.
- The red flag on a cost code mapping is a push that will fail. Fix it before the next bill on that code.
- Cost codes — the codes being mapped.
- Xero — the connection, the account defaults and what synced.