The structure of a chart of accounts is imposed by the legislation in effect in the country concerned. Unfortunately, that structure does not always correspond to the view that a company needs.

In Odoo, you can use the concept of virtual charts of accounts to manage several representations of the same accounts simultaneously. These representations can be shown in real time with no additional data entry.

So your general chart of accounts can be the one imposed by the statutes of your country, and your CEO can then have other virtual charts as necessary, based on the accounts in the general chart. For example, you can create a view per department, a cash-flow and liquidity view, or consolidated accounts for different companies.

The most interesting thing about virtual charts of accounts is that they can be used in the same way as the default chart of accounts for the whole organization. For example, you can establish budgets from your consolidated accounts or the accounts from one of your companies.

Virtual accounts enable you to provide different representations of one or several existing charts of accounts.

Creating and restructuring virtual accounts has no impact on the accounting entries.

You can then use the virtual charts with no risk of altering the general chart of accounts or future accounting entries.

Because they are used only to get a different representation of the same entries, they are very useful for:

• consolidating several companies in real time,
• reporting to a holding according to their chart of accounts,
• depreciation calculations,
• cash-flow views,
• getting more useful views than those imposed,
• presenting summary charts to other users that are appropriate to their general system rights.

To create a new chart of accounts you should create a root account using the menu Accounting > Configuration > Accounts > Accounts. Your top level account should have a name, a code (different from any other code in your current chart), and both Internal Type and Account Type set to View. Then you can choose your structure by creating other accounts of Account Type View as necessary. The Internal Type should be set to Consolidation if you want to map accounts. Check your virtual structure using the menu Accounting > Charts > Charts of Accounts and select the corresponding chart in the drop-down list at the top of the screen.

To be able to map your virtual chart of accounts to your general chart of accounts, you have to set Internal Type as Consolidation. From the Consolidated Children box, you can then map accounts or make accounts consolidate. In the Consolidated Children box, you can add View accounts or normal accounts. If you add a View account to the consolidated children, Odoo will automatically include all existing and future linked accounts.

You can then run reports such as Trial Balance and General Ledger for both your general chart of accounts and your virtual chart(s) giving you another representation of the company. All the actions and states in your general account are also available in the virtual accounts.

Finally, you can also make virtual charts of accounts from other virtual charts. That can give an additional dimension for financial analysis. You can create an unlimited number of virtual (consolidation) charts of accounts.