Let us close this topic now.

Joe

Hence use varying multi digit / character account codes with care to be accountant friendly.

0200
02001
1000
1001
10010
1002
2000
200011
3000

This is a normal presentation, where 5 or more digits are treated as subaccounts.
Can you see the disaster if we would sort these as integers?

This is the way COAs are setup, despite using digits or a combination of digits and characters.

No accountants are confused about this!

Joe

It would be rather inconvenient to treat an account number as an integer.

You are right. The account settings are either Numeric (which mean that only numeric characters are allowed to enter) =0, alphanumeric, where you can enter alpha characters also (Aa to Zz) =1 and last the alpha characters can only be uppercase = 2.

I will give it a try and propose myself as guinea pig - even though as far as I can see the only account in use by me is 0800 and that's equity capital, so not changing frequently.

Joe

So therefore they can start with a zero character.

Look at the demo.frontaccounting.com, Banking and General Ledger. There are several accounts starting with zero, and the are presented in the Balance Sheet.

Joe

    /* allow alpha characters in accounts. 0 = numeric, 1 = alpha numeric, 2 = uppercase alpha numeric */
    $accounts_alpha = 0;

The account are per default set to be numeric.

chart_master.account_code2 can hold the alternate alphanumeric account code if necessary to interface with other applications. It is used in rep701.php other than when primary record is added/updated.

Certain EU countries uses leading zeroes for alternative reporting. I guess some French COA are using this.

Never mind it is probably not that necessary to use leading zero accounts.

Joe

I see your points, there could come bad to worse - on the other hand changing well known account numbers would be slapping in the faces of the (experienced) accountants, as well as would make interfacing more complicated (even though the 0-accounts are nothing that's usually in daily use).

.. I have to think about that

There is one post where there was some comparison of account codes and some errors crept in. In fact the UK CoA had to be modified to start with 1 instead of 0. Better safe than sorry. Also please check the order of the fields if they match the en_US-new.sql - the UK CoA had to be corrected to comply - the official UK CoA pkg still has these errors but my repo has it corrected.

You might want to use my version of the en_US-new.sql - basically make for dynamic fiscal year, removal of redundant indices and inclusion of speed up indices besides currency symbols.

Probably @joe is right if alphanumeric account codes are enabled and used but most users will not bother to change the defaults in the config file! Also URL GET parameters are safer handled with numeric codes when interfacing with third party applications.

Just curious. Why can't the accounts start with zero, if they are alphanumeric? I see no problems in that.

Joe