# \[Beginner question\] Help needed for a French chart of account

**URL:** <https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beginner-question-help-needed-for-a-french-chart-of-account/668>\
**Category:** General\
**Tags:** hledger\
**Created:** [November 1, 2025, 5:32pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beginner-question-help-needed-for-a-french-chart-of-account/668 "2025-11-01T17:32:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![franckla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/87869e/32.png) [@franckla](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/franckla)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2025, 5:32pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beginner-question-help-needed-for-a-french-chart-of-account/668/1 "2025-11-01T17:32:49Z")

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Hi all,

I’m new at PTA and I'd like to use hledger for a bakery in France.

I'm struggling to find a nice way to map the legal [French chart of accounts](https://www.plancomptable.com/en/french-chart-of-accounts.htm) to hledger categories (assets, equity, liabilities, income, expenses,).

The French coa is divided into 8 classes, grouped into two categories: balance sheet accounts (Classes 1–5), which include equity, assets, and liabilities, and profit and loss accounts (Classes 6–7), which include expenses and income.

For the "101 Capital" account (Class 1) I would write:

```auto
account equity:101 
   alias capital

```

How would you do this?

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**Author:** ![simonmic](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/simonmic/32/1_2.png) [@simonmic](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/simonmic)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2025, 6:14pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beginner-question-help-needed-for-a-french-chart-of-account/668/2 "2025-11-01T18:14:22Z")

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Welcome @franckla. That's a nice link.

Maybe start from [https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/2b15846636c239627b77705ed9745234b5b0c833/examples/i18n/fr.journal](https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/2b15846636c239627b77705ed9745234b5b0c833/examples/i18n/fr.journal):

```auto
; Types de compte de premier niveau. Les sous-comptes en hériteront.
; (traduction automatique)
account actifs ; type:A
account actifs:banque ; type:C
account actifs:espèces ; type:C
account passifs ; type:L
account capitaux propres ; type:E
account capitaux propres:conversion ; type:V
account revenus ; type:R
account dépenses ; type:X

```

The [type tags](https://hledger.org/hledger.html#account-types) help standard reports like bs/is to work.

(That is, if you plan to use french account names ?)

You could follow that COA exactly, using french or english names, numbers, or a combination. Whenever the bs/is/cf reports don't show the desired accounts (or `hledger accounts --types` looks wrong), add a few type tags on high-level accounts to help it.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![franckla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/87869e/32.png) [@franckla](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/franckla)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2025, 9:33am UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beginner-question-help-needed-for-a-french-chart-of-account/668/3 "2025-11-02T09:33:05Z")

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Thanks for the help Simon.

So I guess I could have

```auto
account 1:0:1 ; type:E
  alias 101
  alias capital

```

1st alias for accountants, 2nd for non accountants, in french

In that case, would the alias prevent child accounts from inheriting the account type of their parents?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![simonmic](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/forum.plaintextaccounting.org/simonmic/32/1_2.png) [@simonmic](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/simonmic)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2025, 4:20pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beginner-question-help-needed-for-a-french-chart-of-account/668/4 "2025-11-02T16:20:12Z")

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I never tried to work with such purely numeric account names myself; it certainly deserves some experimentation. Another possibility would be combined numbers and names, like `101-capital`.

You would need to write that more like so (the alias subdirective [isn't supported yet](https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/1284), and you might as well declare the account type at top level):

```haskell
account 1 ; type:E

account 1:0:1
alias 101=1:0:1
alias capital=1:0:1

```

(Someone should write a script to generate these from [https://www.plancomptable.com/en/french-chart-of-accounts.htm](https://www.plancomptable.com/en/french-chart-of-accounts.htm))

[account aliases](https://hledger.org/1.50/hledger.html#alias-directive) bring more flexibility but also more complexity and potential for confusion, so see what works for you.

(Re your question, [Aliases and account types](https://hledger.org/1.50/hledger.html#aliases-and-account-types) has some things to say.)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![franckla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/87869e/32.png) [@franckla](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/u/franckla)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2025, 3:38pm UTC](https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/beginner-question-help-needed-for-a-french-chart-of-account/668/5 "2025-11-04T15:38:19Z")

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Thanks again Simon your last example really helped