The HOA Chart of Accounts Template, With a Ledger That Balances Itself

Last verified: September 28, 2026 · See updates

A free Excel file with 54 numbered accounts for a small association, operating and reserve money kept apart, and a general ledger whose trial balance and fund summary calculate themselves as you post. Every account names the line it feeds in the annual budget workbook, so your books and your budget use the same words.

Download HOA_Chart_of_Accounts.xlsx (free, no email)

Free and ungated. You may copy it, change it and give it to your board, members or clients; see the reuse terms.

What is in the file

• Instructions: the numbering, the two funds, the color rule and the stated limits.
• Chart_of_Accounts: the account list. Number, name, group, type, fund, normal balance, the budget workbook line it maps to, and a note on when to use it. Fifteen blank rows at the bottom for your own accounts.
• General_Ledger: where you post. Type a date, an account number, a description and an amount in the Debit or Credit column. The account name, fund and type fill in from the number. Row 3 totals both columns and says whether the ledger is in balance.
• Trial_Balance: debits, credits and net for every account, calculated from the ledger. This is the sheet to read before you close a month.
• Fund_Summary: income, expenses, transfers, and opening and closing balances for the operating fund and the reserve fund side by side, with a check that assets less liabilities equal the closing fund balance.

The numbering, and why the gaps are deliberate

Account numbers are a bookkeeping convention, not something a statute hands you. If your governing documents or your accountant already set a scheme, use theirs. Otherwise what a board needs is one that still works in five years. This file uses:

The gaps are the point. When the board adds a contract in year three, a spare number sits next to the accounts it belongs with. Renumbering a year of posted history to make room is the work this avoids.

Three small choices are worth copying. Fines get their own account (4210) apart from late fees (4200), because the process behind a fine is different and a board is often asked to show them separately. Assessment income is split by unit type only if your dues differ by type. And 1210, the allowance for uncollectible assessments, lets you show a balance you do not expect to collect without deleting the receivable, which is what an owner ledger has to keep.

Operating and reserve, and the entry most boards get wrong

Operating money pays this year’s bills. Reserve money pays for components that wear out: the roof, the pavement, the boiler. Every account in the file is tagged to one fund or the other, and in most associations the two should sit in separate bank accounts.

The monthly reserve contribution is where books go astray. It is not an expense. The money has moved from one pocket to another and the association still holds it. Posting it to an expense account makes the year look worse than it is, tells owners the reserve was spent, and double counts the same dollar when someone adds the two funds together.

So this file types 5900 and 4910 as Transfer, not as expense and income. The Fund_Summary tab shows the transfer on its own line, minus $2,375 in the operating column and plus $2,375 in the reserve column, netting to zero across both funds. In accounting software the same thing is set up either as a bank transfer or as a matching other income and other expense pair.

A worked example: January for the sample association

The file opens with 36 ledger lines already posted: January for the same fictional 24 unit condominium used in the budget workbook, so the two files can be read side by side. Its unit mix and its $28,500 annual reserve contribution are the budget workbook’s. Every figure below was recalculated from the downloaded file on September 28, 2026.

The three entries to look at first

Read these in the file, in this order, and the rest of double entry follows.

1. Billing is not collection (rows 12 to 15, and 16 to 17). January dues of $9,640 are billed to account 1200, assessments receivable, and split across the three unit type income accounts. Payments of $9,400 arrive six rows later and reduce 1200 to $240. That $240 is one unit that has not paid, and it is the number your delinquency report has to agree with. A ledger that only records deposits cannot tell you it exists.
2. A bill and its payment are two entries (rows 18 to 19, then 22 to 23). The December water invoice of $720 arrives on January 12 and is posted to accounts payable. It is paid on January 20 and payable returns to zero. Skip the first entry and the expense lands in the wrong month, which is how a budget to actual comparison starts lying to the board.
3. The reserve transfer is four lines, not two (rows 24 to 27). $2,375 leaves operating cash through account 5900 and arrives in reserve cash through account 4910. Both funds stay in balance on their own, which is what lets the Fund_Summary check pass separately for each.

One figure in the sample is a warning rather than a model. Snow removal is $1,850 in a single month against an annual budget of $4,800 in the budget workbook, so 39% of the year’s snow budget went in January. A ledger tells you that in the first week of February. A bank balance does not.

Your first fifteen minutes with this file

1. Minutes 0 to 4, read the sample. Open General_Ledger and follow the three entries above. Then open Trial_Balance and find the same numbers totalled by account. Nothing on those two tabs is typed twice.
2. Minutes 4 to 6, prune the account list. On Chart_of_Accounts, delete the rows you will never post to. An association with no laundry does not need account 4300. A short list gets used; a long one gets guessed at.
3. Minutes 6 to 9, add your own accounts in the blank rows. Use the range that fits, keep the gaps, and fill in Type and Fund. Those two columns are what the ledger, the trial balance and the fund summary read.
4. Minutes 9 to 12, clear the sample and set your opening balances. Delete rows 8 to 43 of General_Ledger. Post your operating bank balance as a debit to 1010 and a credit to 3010, and your reserve balance as a debit to 1100 and a credit to 3100, both dated the first day of your fiscal year.
5. Minutes 12 to 15, post one real week. Take last week’s bank activity and enter it. Watch row 3 of General_Ledger stay on Yes. If it turns to NO, the last entry you typed has one side.

Then record in the minutes that the board adopted a chart of accounts and where the file lives. A treasurer handover is far easier when the account structure is a board decision on the record and not one volunteer’s habit. The treasurer transition checklist has the rest of that handover.

What this file does not do

• It holds 1,000 ledger lines, rows 8 to 1007, which is roughly a year for a 24 unit association. Start a new file each fiscal year.
• It does not reconcile your bank statement. Compare account 1010 to the statement yourself each month, and have a second board member review the comparison.
• It does not bill owners, age delinquencies or produce owner statements. The dues tracker does the per unit ledger and aging; this file carries the association-level total.
• The trial balance can read In balance while the ledger is not. If you post to an account number that is not on the Chart_of_Accounts tab, the trial balance never sees it. Two things catch it: row 3 of General_Ledger, which totals the raw columns, and the Account name column on the offending line, which reads "Not in the chart of accounts".
• Trial_Balance and Fund_Summary read the account rows through the 15 blank spares. If you need more than 15 extra accounts, copy the last Trial_Balance row down to match.
• It is not tax or accounting advice. Associations generally file a federal return, and which form applies is a question for an accountant who works with community associations.

When a spreadsheet ledger is no longer enough

This file gives a board real double entry books and a set of accounts to grow into. It does not give you bank feeds, an audit trail, or reports that survive a laptop failure. When the association wants those, QuickBooks Online is the general purpose system most small associations move to first, and this account list imports into it as a starting chart of accounts. Read our guide to QuickBooks Online for HOAs for the class setup that keeps the two funds apart, or the HOA software directory for tools built for associations.

Pairs well with

• The annual budget workbook, which every account in this file maps to.
• The dues tracker, for the per unit side of account 1200.
• The reserve contribution calculator, which sets the figure that flows through accounts 5900 and 4910.
• The finances and reserves hub and the budget chapter of the complete guide.

FAQ

Text on this page is licensed CC BY 4.0. Suggested citation: CommonKeel, "The HOA Chart of Accounts Template, With a Ledger That Balances Itself", https://commonkeel.com/templates/hoa-chart-of-accounts/, verified September 28, 2026. Downloadable files are free to use and share within your association; ask michael@commonkeel.com about redistribution.