Kenya

I agree this is a real problem and I support your efforts to find a solution. The issue is actually much more general than just the annual tax return in Kenya though, similar requirements apply in many jurisdictions.

However while I support your endevour to find a solution, I do not think the approach taken is optimal. The reasons

  • For an accountant who’s main business contact is helping prepare the annual tax return it would be very convenient (but boarding on doing them out of a job). However that is not the main use of electronic records for a business owner.

  • Tax authorities specify requirement to monitor their tax income stream, not for effective business management. There is usually alternative COA designs which reveal far more useful information for daily business management.

  • Tax authorities regularly change their coding requirements. It is appropriate a tax accountant is familiar with the intricacies of current and past requirements however the same does not apply to a Manager user entering daily or weekly accounts.

A better solution in my opinion is a country specific localisation which enables mapping of a users chart of accounts to the tax authorities chart of accounts via custom fields on the chart of accounts. As described here Custom fields for chart of accounts - #5 by Patch For Australia that requires two custom fields with 39 localisation defined values.

The business owner is then able to design a chart of account with the optimal structure for their business requirements. A report at tax time then reformats the accounts to that required by their tax authority.

The tax accountants job is then just to

  1. tag the business accounts to the tax authority requirement.

  2. Sort the few entries not covered buy mapping from the users to tax authority account groupings

  3. Advise modifications to the users COA of task 2 accounting suggests a savings opportunity.