The chart of accounts is the backbone of a QuickBooks file: get its structure right and every report adds up; get it wrong and no amount of tidy data entry will save the numbers. Below is a clean starting skeleton for a typical small business, followed by how to adapt it to yours.
The chart of accounts skeleton
The table lists a usable small-business chart of accounts, grouped by type in numbered ranges. Recreate the accounts you need in your own file, keeping each account's type — the type, not the name, is what decides where a balance lands on your financial statements.
| Account # | Account name | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 1000 | Checking account | Assets |
| 1010 | Savings account | Assets |
| 1050 | Undeposited Funds | Assets |
| 1200 | Accounts Receivable | Assets |
| 1400 | Inventory asset | Assets |
| 1500 | Furniture & equipment | Assets |
| 1550 | Accumulated depreciation | Assets |
| 2000 | Accounts Payable | Liabilities |
| 2100 | Credit card | Liabilities |
| 2200 | Sales tax payable | Liabilities |
| 2300 | Payroll liabilities | Liabilities |
| 2700 | Loans / notes payable | Liabilities |
| 3000 | Owner's equity / common stock | Equity |
| 3100 | Owner's draw / distributions | Equity |
| 3900 | Retained earnings | Equity |
| 4000 | Sales / services income | Income |
| 4100 | Other income | Income |
| 4900 | Discounts & refunds | Income |
| 5000 | Cost of goods sold | Cost of Goods Sold |
| 5100 | Materials & purchases | Cost of Goods Sold |
| 5200 | Subcontracted labor | Cost of Goods Sold |
| 6000 | Advertising & marketing | Expenses |
| 6100 | Bank & merchant fees | Expenses |
| 6200 | Contract labor | Expenses |
| 6300 | Insurance | Expenses |
| 6400 | Office supplies & software | Expenses |
| 6500 | Payroll — wages | Expenses |
| 6550 | Payroll taxes | Expenses |
| 6600 | Rent & lease | Expenses |
| 6700 | Utilities | Expenses |
| 6800 | Professional fees | Expenses |
| 6900 | Meals | Expenses |
| 6950 | Travel | Expenses |
How to adapt it to your business
Start by keeping only what you use. A service business with no stock should delete the inventory asset and the entire Cost of Goods Sold range; a product business should expand them, often splitting cost of goods sold by product line. The skeleton is intentionally broad so you can subtract rather than invent — a shorter chart that you actually understand beats a long one full of accounts you never post to.
Keep the numbering ranges even as you add accounts. Leaving gaps — 6410, 6420 — lets you insert related expenses later without renumbering everything, and holding each account inside its range means your Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss keep grouping cleanly. If you would rather not show numbers to your team, QuickBooks lets you turn the account-number display off while the ordering still works underneath. For the full concept behind this structure, read the chart of accounts reference.
Finally, resist the urge to create an account for every vendor or customer — that is what names, classes, and items are for. The chart of accounts answers "what kind of money is this," not "who was it with." Get the type right on every account and your reports will tie; get it wrong and the cleanest data entry in the world still produces statements that don't add up.
Building it into a QuickBooks file
If you are standing up a new file, the chart of accounts is the first structural decision you make, and it is far cheaper to get right at the start than to untangle later. Our QuickBooks setup builds a chart like this one around your actual business, so the very first transaction lands in the right place. If your existing chart has already sprawled — duplicates, mis-typed accounts, one-off accounts nobody remembers creating — a free read-only QuickBooks review reads it against a clean structure and shows you exactly what to merge, retype, or retire.