What Should Our Chart of Accounts Include?
Your chart of accounts, is a list of each account that a bookkeeping system tracks, and should be designed to capture the financial information you need to keep track of your financial information and make good financial decisions.

The chart is divided into five categories: assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses and equity. Each account is assigned an identifying number for use within the accounting system. In order to decide what to include in your chart of accounts you will want to consider each of the following questions:

What reports do you want to prepare?
What financial decisions, do you need to make on a regular basis?
What level of detail do you require?
The best way to design a chart of accounts is to first consider what reports you want to prepare to satisfy requirements and help you with decision. You can then determine which categories to include in the reports you plan to produce.

A good rule of thumb is to keep the chart of accounts as simple as possible, and revise it as your need for information increases over time. Throughout the year, as you write checks or receive money, keep track of those times when it was unclear to you which account number to assign to the transaction. That can be an indicator that the chart of accounts needs to be revised or that the criteria for assigning account numbers need to be clarified.

What are the Features of a Simple Chart of Accounts?
Most simple accounting system have a Sample Chart of Accounts for each industry. I would suggest starting with the sample chart of accounts and then modify throughout the year. Example of a very simple, chart of accounts listing