Updating chart of accounts list in OpenERP

Question

I want to install new chart of accounts. I managed to install it without errors, but it doesn't appear in chart of accounts list to choose from. Do I need to add a link to my chart of accounts in account module somewhere for it to recognize or do I need something else?

I can see that module from second chart of accounts list. What I mean is first when I get to choose from chart of accounts lists which one I want to use, I can't see my chart of accounts, but if I choose any other chart of accounts and get to second window, where I have to choose company, set taxes etc. I can then see second chart of accounts list, which shows installed chart of accounts list. And then I see the one I chose and also my chart of accounts. And then if I choose my chart of accounts, I get error that tax names should be unique. I think that is because previous chart of accounts was generate. If I close that window, I can see in configuration that both chart of accounts were generated.

Answer 1

Finally managed to solve this problem. When I changed taxes names to be unique (payable and receivable VAT names were the same) and changed close_method to unreconciled on some account types, because openerp requires to use it, now I managed to successfully install it and I can see it on chart of accounts list.

Answer 2

If you want your module to appear in the list of available Chart of Accounts on the first Accounting wizard, make sure you have properly set the module category to Localization/Account Charts in the manifest (__openerp__.py). It's a very good idea to get inspiration from existing Charts of Accounts, for example l10n_be. Have a look at an existing manifest to see the exact syntax/spelling to use.

However it's not clear that this will solve your problem, because this wizard does not do what you think it does. There are 2 main accounting configuration wizards in the 6.0/6.1 OpenERP series:

• "Install your Chart of Accounts": this first wizard has 2 purposes: install an appropriate Chart of Account module, and generate the fiscal year and fiscal periods for the selected company. It will let you install any of the modules that belong to the Localization/Account Charts category, and will let you configure the fiscal periods for one of the companies that have no Chart of Accounts installed yet. This wizard does not actually configure or create a Chart of Accounts, it only install a module and the templates that come with it.
• "Generate Chart of Accounts from a Chart Template": this wizard finishes the job started by the first one, by actually creating a full Chart of Accounts for the selected company, using one of the installed templates (coming from installed localization modules). You'll see your Chart of Accounts available in this wizard as soon as your module is installed. This wizard should only let you configure a Chart of Accounts for companies that don't have one yet, because you cannot do that twice for the same company.

If you get an error about duplicate taxes while running the second wizard, it should not be directly related to running the first wizard or not. Perhaps you really have defined several Tax Templates with the same name in your Chart of Accounts, or perhaps you have created taxes manually for the same company, and they now conflict with the ones in your Chart of Accounts? There could be many different reasons, it's difficult to tell without more info.

In any case, double-check your module using l10n_be as an example, and make sure you read the official documentation for writing Chart of Accounts modules, if you did not read it yet.

And when you don't understand something, remember that OpenERP is open source, so use the Source, Luke :-)
The source code of the first wizard is here and the one for the second wizard is there. A look at the source would answer your current question, and probably your future questions too :-)

Answer 3

Your chart probably doesn't appear during the initial configuration because your module hasn't been installed yet. You might be able to skip the configuration of a new database, install your module, and then run the configuration.

Another option might be to install the minimal or generic chart of accounts during configuration. Is there a "None" option? After that, you can install your own module that includes all the extra accounts and taxes that your company uses. I think that's what we did, but it was back in version 5, so things may work slightly differently now.