Good morning,
My first real functionnal request here,
regarding Chart of Account (CoA) implementation in DOKOS.
Like ERPNext, DOKOS seems to be restrictive on how EU-based CoA can be handled.
Here are several points which I want to review with DOKOS team:
1- ERPNext was initially designed without account numbering. Account name was used as main identifier, so was set to be unique for each records, leading to avoid duplicate account name. This particularity remains today.
2- Later on, ERPNext developers added the account numbering feature, requested by many users for a while.
As per account name, account numbers are set to be unique (which is relevant).
Thus, no duplicate accounts numbers allowed, and this is logical and most wanted.
But whatâs not is the fact that accounts name remained to be unique as well, so still no allowed duplicate here.
Iâm a bit doubtful on how the design for accounts mapping works in ERPNext (and DOKOS?)
Although account numbers are implemented, are they used for mapping into financial reporting or is it still account names? Why did the ERPNext devs left the account name forced to be unique?
These 2 points have serious consequences on the following:
3- If you want to use LU CoA, then you need to modify the labels for the duplicated accounts names (there is a lot of them in LU CoA especially in âsub-accounts nodes and leafsâ by, for instance, concataining the account number with the account name. This could lead one to choice not using the account numbering feature, but I see some concerns (legally) in not doing it.
4- Account âRoot typesâ Asset & Liability are shared within the root account âClass 4â in LU CoAs (I guess that it is the same for FR).
The problem is that we can set only one âRoot Typeâ per root account.
I have seen several workarounds about this case, like :
a- Not using account numbers and split the Class 4 in 2 different root accounts
* [Class 4 - Asset]
* [Class 4 - Liability)
b- Use account numbers, create a dummy âLiabilityâ root account in the CoA to be imported,
import CoA (without splitted Class 4),
and then manually repopulate âLiabilityâ in âroot typeâ fields in each âgroup accountsâ as required.
I did not test any of these workarounds yet.
Using 4a is leaving us with the legal concern.
On the other side, using option 4b do not solve the duplicate account name problem, so we will end-up with account numbering + modified account labels (With numbers concatained?) which finally becomes a bit of a crazy workaround, not that serious for the objective targeted for the deployment of an ERP in our EU countries.
It should be great to get your experimented feed back on that particular point.
Splitting root account âClass 4â cannot be done without disabling account numbering, and therefore, Iâm wondering about the outcome when we have to stick to legal requirements, or more technically, accounts mapping against financial reporting.
5- Last but not least, the account name is limited to 140 chars. This is a problem for LU CoA where the required CHARS lenght is sometimes closer to 255. The workaround here is to modify the relevant fields parameters.
I have read somewhere that it could be done via the Account DocType directly, but tried it and it did not work.
I had to modify the fields properties in the DB as well.
So, is it necessary to do both or not? I did not try yet?
This point should not be that difficult to resolve, compared to the others.
As you can read, there are a few questions, and Iâm very curious on how you did manage that your side.
When installing DOKOS for the first time, I thought it was prepared to those CoA limitations, even partially.
But it looks like its not really yet the case, and, without willing to offend your great work, itâs a bit suprising.
I would have wished to find a French CoA by default, for instance, instead of the native âStandardâ one.
Iâm sure there is some good reasons to that.
Missing time or, maybe, are your currently ongoing with a profound revamping in this area within DOKOS ?
Thank you very much for your attention.
Best Regards.