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Finance → Accounting → Chart of Accounts → /accounting-ledger/chart-of-accounts Finance → Accounting → Service Types → /accounting-ledger/service-types Two records decide where every shilling lands:
  • an account is a line in your general ledger;
  • a service type is a billable or payable thing, mapped to an account.
Get these right once and the ledger takes care of itself. Get them wrong and every report downstream is wrong in the same way.

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Chart of accounts

The chart of accounts is your account tree. Each account carries:

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Where each type appears

Never delete or re-code an account that has postings. Postings resolve by code; changing a code orphans history. Deactivate instead — it disappears from selection lists and keeps its balance.

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Designing the chart

  • Keep it as small as it can be. Every extra account is a decision someone has to make correctly, every time.
  • Split where you will act on the split. Separate water from electricity if you manage them differently; do not separate “cleaning materials” from “cleaning supplies”.
  • Use control accounts for receivables and payables, with the detail in the subledger rather than in dozens of accounts.
  • Mirror the statements you have to produce. If a landlord report needs gross rent separated from recoveries, the chart should already separate them.

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Service types

A service type is the catalogue entry for anything you bill or pay: rent, water, service charge, garbage, parking, deposit, late fee, management commission.
Service types are the join between the operational world and the ledger. An invoice line references a service type; the service type names the account; the posting lands there. Without the mapping, the invoice cannot post.

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Setting up a service type

1

Create the service type

Name it the way it should read on a tenant’s invoice.
2

Map the account

Choose the income account for revenue items, the expense account for cost items. This is the step that is most often skipped and most expensive to fix later.
3

Set the tax class

The platform default is non-VAT; mark VAT-rated items explicitly. See Tax & eTIMS.
4

Set the default amount

Where a branch-standard price exists. This makes outliers visible in recurring charges.
5

Set the classification

Rent and deposit flags matter — occupancy reporting and deposit balances read them.

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Service types every organisation needs

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Provider integrations and sync

Service types can be synchronised with external providers, with a last synced indicator and a mappings surface for reviewing and retrying failures. See Tax & eTIMS for the KRA item catalogue side of this.

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Checks worth running

1

Every service type has an account

An unmapped service type produces invoices that never post.
2

No two service types map to the same account for different purposes

If rent and service charge both post to “Rental income”, you cannot report them separately.
3

Deposits do not post to income

A deposit in an income account overstates revenue and understates liabilities.
4

Inactive accounts have no active service types pointing at them

Postings will fail silently at the worst possible time — during a billing run.

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Next steps

Accounting periods

Control when postings may land.

Financial statements

What the chart produces.