Is there a way to make multiple accounts inactive at once, or does one need to edit each account individually?
In my head I imagine a batch edit function button shown on the chart of accounts to enable unticking (or ticking) the accounts I want to deactivate, or other batch edit functions like moving a range of accounts into another group.
Wherever something can be inactive (TRUE or FALSE) such as Inventory Items you can use the batch update function Use Batch Create and Batch Update functions | Manager
Why?
Do you really rearrange your chart of accounts so often and change that many accounts that it would actually be worth learning about a mass update method.
Batch operations (Delete, Update and Inactivate) in COA wouldn’t be bad. But I don’t think it deserves to be in ideas.
Batch Update/Delete in Chart of Accounts could be a recipe for disaster
How many users regularly modify their Chart of Accounts?
If they are properly setup, it would be rare to make more than one or two changes every year - that hardly calls for allowing batch operations
I’m not sure how “deleting accounts” got into this thread 
, but if nobody else makes groups of accounts inactive or regroups or reorders them I’ll soldier on editing them individually.
Making general ledger account inactive several times in the year is a common thing for Non-profit users and users in other industries. Many Non-profit organisations in my country create expense and revenue accounts and divisions (based on budget headlines/Activities) to track project expenses. Some of these projects last for only a few weeks, some last for months and some last for years. Anytime a project ends, the general ledger is edited to remove project income and expenses accounts and related balance sheet accounts. This makes it very easy for auditors and sponsors to reconcile project financial reports to General Ledger/trial Balance.
See example below
There is more.
It will be nice to have it but again i think it doesn’t need to be in the Ideas category
@Abeiku, I think your example provides an excellent reason for not implementing this feature. The end of such a project is a one-time event, not part of a general reorganization of the chart of accounts.
I don’t understand @Tut . The end of the project makes those accounts redundant, why shouldn’t they be inactivated?
I am not saying they should not be inactivated. I am saying that the end of each project is a unique event. I see no reason to make that event part of a bulk change to the chart of accounts.
I also question the advisability of creating these projects as accounts in the first place, because they are temporary. There are other options for segregating income and expenses (divisions, projects, special accounts, etc.). But that is another topic.
@Tut Only the project account will be deactivated; there will be no bulk changes. All I’m saying is that it would be wonderful if you could choose all of these accounts and deactivate them all at once.
Well, Most of these donors request for this to be done.
See an example below
The Donor’s Auditors will check the general ledger. If the general ledger is in a different currency like this example, the exchange rate will be used to confirm the correctness of the general ledger balances.
I don’t think each project should give rise to a separate G/L account - projects or divisions wuld be a better fit to this need imho
@Joe91 Did you see the example? (Screenshot) There are times you execute multiple projects for the same Sponsor. You can use the same accounts e.g Activity 1, Activity 2, Activity 3 or Conference Package, Media Publications, Training Workshops, but you will create Divisions to enable you to generate fund reports.
@Joe91 If users could create and manage transactions and Master records (Customers, Suppliers, Inventory, …) with batch operations wouldn’t it be a plus to extend that to the management of the Chart of Account? 
How many times in the year will there be a batch operation on Payment transactions or even journal entries? yet these modules have batch functions.
Do you know Divisions has batch functions?
I think this deserves to be in ideas for consistency sake
Consistency aside, I do not think it wise to encourage or facilitate bulk changes to the chart of accounts. That just is not good accounting practice, in my opinion. As @Joe91 wrote, divisions and projects are better ways to handle temporary activities. And even if accounts are used to segregate such activities, their inactivation would be separate events.
Yes, only the project accounts will be touched, I don’t mean to touch everything in COA.
But how would you prevent that? Or distinguish “project accounts” from others?
With a Batch Update operation. You will just update the targeted accounts. You will change the Inactive status to True just like how it is done for Special Accounts
My question was not how it would be accomplished. You said “only the project accounts would be touched.” I was asking how you would distinguish project accounts from others to prevent other accounts from being touched.
Custom fields on COA to facilitate custom report grouping and ordering would be useful imo.
In contrast I see no value in batch changes to the COA as changes should be to a small number of accounts and only performed very occasionally in response to a specific event. For which direct editing of the COA is most efficient and least error prone.
