The Chart of Accounts

Money in Financials sits in accounts. Nobody authors them: they are minted automatically from your Invoice Types and Line Items. Configure an Invoice Type on the Event Invoice Types page and its accounts appear with it, in the same transaction. This is the part of the model that most directly explains the product. When an invoice is created, paid, or voided, what actually happens is that money moves between the accounts below. The Ledger describes the balanced rows, and What Each Action Posts maps product actions to those rows.

The Account Roles

Every account has a role, which says what it is for.

Role	One per	What it holds
Cash	Company	The single account every payment posts against. There is exactly one, and it has no Invoice Type behind it.
Line item	Line Item Type	The income or expense account for that line — where the money is finally recognized.
Payable / Receivable	Line Item Type	The balance twin of the line above: what is owed on it but not yet settled. A line expecting money out gets a Payable; one expecting money in gets a Receivable.
Reserves	Loss/Recovery type	The reserve balance for that type.
Unpaid Losses / Unpaid Recoveries	Loss/Recovery type	Money expected to move that has been reserved but not yet paid. Named for the type’s expected direction.
Additional Incurred / Additional Recovered	Loss/Recovery type	Relief for payments that deliberately do not draw down the reserve.

What Gets Minted, and When

The company's first Invoice Type mints Cash

Cash is created lazily by whichever configuration change needs it first. Every company has exactly one for its whole life.

A Loss/Recovery type mints its three core accounts

Reserves, Unpaid Losses (or Unpaid Recoveries), and Additional Incurred (or Additional Recovered) — all three carrying the type’s expected direction. An Operating type mints none of these: it has no reserves, so it has nothing to hold them in.

Each Line Item Type mints a pair

Its line item account, plus its own balance twin — a Payable or a Receivable according to that line’s direction. This happens for both kinds of Invoice Type.

Two rules do all the work, and they read from different directions — a detail that matters as soon as a type owns a line item pointing the other way:

The three core accounts follow the Invoice Type’s expected direction.
Each line item pair follows that line item’s own direction.

The balance twin is per line item, not per type. A type with four line items has four Payable/Receivable accounts, one each. This is what lets a multi-line invoice’s outstanding balance split correctly across lines that point in different directions.

Worked Examples

Three types, each with two line items pointing in opposite directions. Cash is shared company-wide and is not counted in any of them. Each tab gives the same set twice: a table pairing every account with its provenance and its chart section, and a tree showing the shape a configuration mints. A dash in the Line Item column marks an account minted at the Invoice Type level, which belongs to no line item. Hover any account name to see its machine key.

Operating
Loss
Recovery

Broker Fees — an Operating type expecting money out, owning Commission (expense) and Refund (income).An Operating type mints no core accounts. Two line items × two accounts = 4 accounts.

Invoice Type	Line Item	Section
Broker Fees	Commission	Expenses
Broker Fees	Commission	Liabilities
Broker Fees	Refund	Income
Broker Fees	Refund	Assets

Broker Fees
├─ Commission
│  ├─ broker-fees-commission-1
│  └─ broker-fees-commission-payable-1
└─ Refund
   ├─ broker-fees-refund-1
   └─ broker-fees-refund-receivable-1

Note the two line items land in different chart sections — one an expense, one income — and their twins on opposite sides of the balance sheet, purely because their directions differ.

ALAE — a Loss/Recovery type expecting money out, owning Legal Fees (expense) and Expense Recovery (income).Three core accounts + two line items × two = 7 accounts.

Invoice Type	Line Item	Section
ALAE	—	Liabilities
ALAE	—	Liabilities
ALAE	—	Expenses
ALAE	Legal Fees	Expenses
ALAE	Legal Fees	Liabilities
ALAE	Expense Recovery	Income
ALAE	Expense Recovery	Assets

ALAE
├─ ⟨type level⟩
│  ├─ alae-reserves-1
│  ├─ alae-unpaid-1
│  └─ alae-additional-1
├─ Legal Fees
│  ├─ alae-legal-fees-1
│  └─ alae-legal-fees-payable-1
└─ Expense Recovery
   ├─ alae-expense-recovery-1
   └─ alae-expense-recovery-receivable-1

The three core accounts are named and oriented for a loss — “Unpaid Losses”, “Additional Incurred” — because the type expects money out. The Expense Recovery line item still gets an income leaf and a Receivable twin, because it expects money in.

Subrogation — a Loss/Recovery type expecting money in, owning Recovery (income) and Recovery Costs (expense).Three core accounts + two line items × two = 7 accounts.

Invoice Type	Line Item	Section
Subrogation	—	Assets
Subrogation	—	Assets
Subrogation	—	Income
Subrogation	Recovery	Income
Subrogation	Recovery	Assets
Subrogation	Recovery Costs	Expenses
Subrogation	Recovery Costs	Liabilities

Subrogation
├─ ⟨type level⟩
│  ├─ subrogation-reserves-1
│  ├─ subrogation-unpaid-1
│  └─ subrogation-additional-1
├─ Recovery
│  ├─ subrogation-recovery-1
│  └─ subrogation-recovery-receivable-1
└─ Recovery Costs
   ├─ subrogation-recovery-costs-1
   └─ subrogation-recovery-costs-payable-1

This is the case that shows the two rules are genuinely independent. The core accounts flip to the asset side and take recovery names, because the type expects money in — while Recovery Costs still mints an expense leaf and a Payable, because that one line expects money out.

The product exposes the same relationship on the Event Invoice Types page and the read-only Chart of Accounts page. The local fixture below uses Comission as its Invoice Type name and gives the two line items their full display names.

Invoice type configuration

Event Invoice Types page showing the Comission Operating Invoice Type with Broker Fees Commission marked Payable and Broker Fees Refund marked Receivable — The Operating Invoice Type named Comission contains Broker Fees Commission as a Payable line item and Broker Fees Refund as a Receivable line item.

Fees (outbound)

The outbound Broker Fees Commission line item creates an expense account and its matching payable.

Chart of Accounts Expenses section showing the debit-normal Comission Broker Fees Commission account and its stable key — The expense half appears as Comission Broker Fees Commission under Expenses. It is debit-normal and uses the stable key comission-broker-fees-commission-1.

Chart of Accounts Liabilities section showing the credit-normal Comission Broker Fees Commission Payable account and its stable key — The liability half appears as Comission Broker Fees Commission Payable under Liabilities. It is credit-normal and uses the stable key comission-broker-fees-commission-payable-1.

Fees refund (inbound)

The inbound Broker Fees Refund line item creates an income account and its matching receivable.

Chart of Accounts Income section showing the credit-normal Comission Broker Fees Refund account and its stable key — The income half appears as Comission Broker Fees Refund under Income. It is credit-normal and uses the stable key comission-broker-fees-refund-1.

Chart of Accounts Assets section showing the debit-normal Comission Broker Fees Refund Receivable account and its stable key — The asset half appears as Comission Broker Fees Refund Receivable under Assets. It is debit-normal and uses the stable key comission-broker-fees-refund-receivable-1.

Video walkthrough

Watch the complete example, from configuring the two line items through inspecting all four generated accounts.

The keys for the three core accounts are direction-agnostic — -reserves, -unpaid, -additional — even though their display names are not. A machine reading alae-unpaid-1 and subrogation-unpaid-1 resolves both the same way; only the words a human sees change with direction.

Accounts Are Frozen at Birth

An account’s name is fixed the moment it is minted, and there is no operation anywhere that renames, re-parents, or re-orients one. The Chart of Accounts page is therefore an inspection surface, not an account editor.

Renaming an Invoice Type does not rename its accounts. The type’s display name changes everywhere in the product; the accounts it minted keep the name they were born with. This is deliberate — a ledger row posted last year must still be readable against the account name it was posted to.

Each account also has a stable machine key — indemnity-unpaid-1, alae-legal-fees-payable-1 — which is what exports and integrations resolve against. The trailing number makes the key unique: deprecating an “Indemnity” type and creating a new one mints indemnity-unpaid-2 alongside the original, so the old postings stay attached to the old account. The only account that can ever be removed is one that has never been posted to — deleting a configuration row you just created by mistake. Once a single ledger row exists against an account, it exists permanently.

The Four Sections Are a Lens, Not a Structure

Accounts read into the four familiar sections:

Assets

Liabilities

Income

Expenses

But no account stores which section it is in, and no account is a heading. The section is worked out at the moment of reading, from the account’s role plus the direction behind it:

Role	Expects money out	Expects money in
Cash	Assets	Assets
Line item	Expenses	Income
Payable	Liabilities	—
Receivable	—	Assets
Reserves	Liabilities	Assets
Unpaid	Liabilities	Assets
Additional	Expenses	Income

Deriving this rather than storing it has one consequence worth stating plainly: every account can be posted to. There are no structural rows — no roots, no rollups, no headings that exist to organize but cannot carry a balance. The grouping you see when reading the chart is computed over accounts that all hold real money.

Balances by Entity

Alongside the ledger, Financials keeps a running balance per account per entity — for events, policies, and payees. This is what makes “the outstanding balance on this claim” or “what we owe this vendor” answerable without scanning the ledger. Like everything in the read tier, these are derived and rebuildable. The ledger remains the authority; the per-entity balances are a summary of it kept current as actions land. Those summaries feed the Company Event Financials and Event Financials tab views.

Appendix: Every Minting Rule

The complete set. Nothing else mints an account, and there are no other combinations.

Company level

Trigger	Mints	Key	Role	Section
The first configuration change of the company’s life	Cash	`cash-1`	Cash	Assets

Exactly one, for the company’s whole life. It has no Invoice Type behind it, and every payment in the system posts against it.

Invoice Type level

Read from the Invoice Type’s expected direction. <T> is the type’s name at the moment of minting, <t> its slug.

Kind	Expects	Mints	Key	Role	Section
Operating	either	nothing	—	—	—
Loss/Recovery	money out	`<T> Reserves`	`<t>-reserves-N`	Reserves	Liabilities
		`<T> Unpaid Losses`	`<t>-unpaid-N`	Unpaid	Liabilities
		`<T> Additional Incurred`	`<t>-additional-N`	Additional	Expenses
Loss/Recovery	money in	`<T> Reserves`	`<t>-reserves-N`	Reserves	Assets
		`<T> Unpaid Recoveries`	`<t>-unpaid-N`	Unpaid	Assets
		`<T> Additional Recovered`	`<t>-additional-N`	Additional	Income

An Operating type mints nothing at this level because it has no reserves — there is nothing to hold, so no account is created to hold it.

Line Item Type level

Read from the line item’s own direction, independently of its type’s. Applies to line items on both kinds of Invoice Type, identically.

Line item expects	Mints	Key	Role	Section
money out	`<T> <L>`	`<t>-<l>-N`	Line item	Expenses
	`<T> <L> Payable`	`<t>-<l>-payable-N`	Payable	Liabilities
money in	`<T> <L>`	`<t>-<l>-N`	Line item	Income
	`<T> <L> Receivable`	`<t>-<l>-receivable-N`	Receivable	Assets

Counting

For one Invoice Type with n line items:

Kind	Accounts minted
Operating	2n
Loss/Recovery	3 + 2n

Plus the one company-wide Cash account, shared by every type.

N is the uniqueness suffix, and it is almost always 1. It increments only when a stem is already taken — deprecating an “ALAE” type and creating a new one by the same name mints alae-unpaid-2 beside the original alae-unpaid-1, so postings made against the old configuration stay attached to the old accounts.

Concepts

Guides

Pages

Accounting Model

The Account Roles

What Gets Minted, and When

Worked Examples

Video walkthrough

Accounts Are Frozen at Birth

The Four Sections Are a Lens, Not a Structure

Assets

Liabilities

Income

Expenses

Balances by Entity

Appendix: Every Minting Rule

Company level

Invoice Type level

Line Item Type level

Counting

​The Account Roles

​What Gets Minted, and When

​Worked Examples

​Video walkthrough

​Accounts Are Frozen at Birth

​The Four Sections Are a Lens, Not a Structure

Assets

Liabilities

Income

Expenses

​Balances by Entity

​Appendix: Every Minting Rule

​Company level

​Invoice Type level

​Line Item Type level

​Counting

The Account Roles

What Gets Minted, and When

Worked Examples

Video walkthrough

Accounts Are Frozen at Birth

The Four Sections Are a Lens, Not a Structure

Balances by Entity

Appendix: Every Minting Rule

Company level

Invoice Type level

Line Item Type level

Counting