A general accounting plan establishes three things: how accounts are named and classified, how transactions are measured, and the format of the annual accounts prepared at the end of the financial year.
All three are specific to each jurisdiction. The third also determines what ultimately reaches a public register.
General Accounting Plan Decret 479/2025, de 23 de desembre — Pla General de Comptabilitat
What does it mean to “translate” accounts?
When you use software designed for another country, it supplies that country's chart of accounts. It works: you can record transactions and produce reports. The problem appears when something must be filed.
- 01During the yearThe business uses accounts from the foreign plan, or creates its own within the structure the software permits.
- 02At year-endThose balances must be converted to the Andorran structure so the annual accounts can be prepared—usually in a spreadsheet.
- 03The following yearThe work is repeated because the conversion lived in the spreadsheet, not in the accounting system.
What changes with native support?
The annual accounts no longer need to be assembled; they can be read directly from the system. Financial statements come straight from the balances in the required structure, and every figure can be opened down to the journal entry that produced it.
| Translated chart | Native chart | |
|---|---|---|
| During the year | Accounts from another country | Andorran accounts |
| At year-end | Manual conversion | No conversion |
| Financial statements | Assembled separately | Generated from the ledger |
| Audit trail | Lost in conversion | Extends to the source document |
| Who can operate it | The person with the spreadsheet | Any qualified accounting user |
The detail that determines whether a migration works
When changing software, the important question is not whether the new system includes the Andorran plan. It is what happens to the historical data.
- Opening balances must agree with the previous year's annual accounts, not merely with whatever the old software reports.
- The mapping between old and new accounts must remain available for later review, not be applied once and discarded.
- Historical documents must remain readable exactly as issued, even after the chart of accounts changes.
A migration that balances on day one but cannot be explained six months later is not complete; it only looks complete.
Test it for yourself
If you are evaluating a tool, these three questions distinguish software built around the Andorran plan from software where it has merely been added on:
- Can you generate the balance sheet and income statement with the Andorran structure without exporting anything?
- Can you select a figure in a financial statement and drill down to the journal entry and source document?
- When the standard changes, who updates the chart of accounts and where do they publish the update?
Official Gazette of the Principality of Andorra Butlletí Oficial del Principat d'Andorra