French general chart of accounts: understanding account classes

Quick answer. France's general chart of accounts (Plan comptable général, or PCG), set by ANC regulation no. 2014-03 of 5 June 2014, sorts accounts into seven classes numbered 1 to 7, plus a class 8 for special accounts. Classes 1 to 5 build the balance sheet; classes 6 and 7 feed the income statement.

Open your general ledger, your trial balance or an audit file, and you meet strings of digits: 401, 411, 512, 606, 706. These numbers are not arbitrary. They follow a precise grammar, codified by the general chart of accounts, that lets any accountant or auditor read an entry without explanation. Knowing how to read an account number means you stop enduring your accounting and start steering it.

In our engagements, the first reflex we pass on to business owners is not to memorise thousands of accounts, but to grasp the logic of the classes. Once that anchor is in place, you decode the nature of a transaction in seconds, you spot a doubtful posting, and you read your financial statements with a critical eye.

The general chart of accounts is the official framework that organises and names every account used in French accounting. It sets a numbering scheme shared by all companies, which makes accounts comparable from one firm to another and readable by the tax authorities, banks or a buyer.

The PCG is set by regulation no. 2014-03 of 5 June 2014 issued by the Autorité des normes comptables (ANC, the French accounting standards board), approved by a ministerial order of 8 September 2014. It is updated regularly by the ANC, with a consolidated version applicable on 1 January each year.

This framework does not stand alone. It works hand in hand with article L123-12 of the French Commercial Code, which requires anyone with merchant status to record chronologically the movements affecting their assets, to verify by inventory at least once every twelve months the existence and value of assets and liabilities, and to draw up annual accounts at year-end: balance sheet, income statement and notes, forming an inseparable whole. The chart of accounts is the tool that makes this recording consistent. For a full picture of the registers and filings involved, our guide to SME accounting obligations covers this regulatory base.

The PCG splits all accounts into seven main classes, numbered 1 to 7, plus a class 8 reserved for special accounts. Each class groups a homogeneous family of transactions.

Most owners we work with instinctively know classes 6 and 7, because they speak the daily language: what the business spends and what it earns. Classes 1 to 5 are less familiar, yet they describe the very structure of the company.

The PCG codification is decimal and hierarchical: the first digit always marks the class, and each added digit refines the account. You move from general to specific, left to right.

Take account 401100:

1. The 1st digit (4) gives the class: third-party accounts.
2. The first 2 digits (40) give the main account: suppliers.
3. The 3-digit account (401) means suppliers: current payables.
4. The following digits (401100) form a sub-account the company creates to single out one supplier.

A few rules of thumb we share with clients to decode on the fly:

• An account starting with 4 is almost always a third-party account: 401 suppliers, 411 customers, 421 staff, 44 State and VAT.
• An account starting with 5 is financial: 512 bank, 530 cash.
• An account starting with 6 is an expense, one starting with 7 is revenue. The second digit refines it: 60 purchases, 64 payroll, 70 sales.
• A 9 in second position often flags a reverse entry: 609 rebates received on purchases, 709 rebates granted on sales.

The PCG sets the frame. Beyond the mandatory accounts, a company may subdivide for internal analysis. The key is to keep a stable logic from one year to the next, which accounting software such as Pennylane makes easier by offering a preset chart that we tailor to your activity.

This is the most structuring distinction in the PCG, and the one that sheds the most light on your financial statements. Classes 1 to 5 are balance-sheet accounts; classes 6 and 7 are income accounts.

Balance-sheet accounts describe the state of the assets and liabilities at a given moment, the closing date. Their balance carries over from one year to the next: what you owed a supplier on 31 December is still owed on the following 1 January. To connect these balances to the snapshot of your business, see how to read a balance sheet.

Income accounts measure the activity of a period. They record the flows of expenses and revenue for the year, then are cleared at closing: their total forms the result. On 1 January, accounts 6 and 7 reset to zero. That is exactly what the income statement reflects, which we help you read line by line.

Class 8, rarer, appears neither in the balance sheet nor in the income statement: it lists off-balance-sheet commitments (guarantees given, sureties received) disclosed in the notes.

The PCG is a common base, but several situations call for adjustments.

• Associations and foundations. They apply a dedicated chart, drawn from the sector-specific ANC regulation, with accounts unique to earmarked funds and grants. We detail this logic in our article on the chart of accounts for associations, relevant to any leader in the sector (see also our work with associations and foundations).
• Groups and foreign subsidiaries. A French subsidiary of an international group often juggles its local chart and the group consolidation chart. Managing intercompany accounts and chart mappings is a topic in its own right, covered in our guide on charts of accounts in a multi-country group.
• Micro-businesses and simplified regimes. The simplified real regime applies up to 945,000 euros of turnover for sales and accommodation, and 286,000 euros for services. The micro-business caps at 203,100 euros (sales) and 83,600 euros (services). The smaller the business, the lighter the presentation of accounts, but the class logic stays identical.

Decoding the classes is not enough: transactions must be posted correctly. Here are the errors we meet most often in files we take over.

1. Confusing an expense with a fixed asset. A durable purchase above a certain value belongs to class 2 (asset depreciated over several years), not class 6 (expense of the year). The mistake distorts both the result and the balance sheet.
2. Posting a third-party transaction as an expense. An advance, a deposit or a down payment is not an expense: it is a third-party account (class 4). Booked in class 6, it artificially worsens the result.
3. Neglecting suspense accounts 47. Accounts 471 to 478 are for waiting, not sleeping. A suspense balance left open at closing is a signal that the tax authorities and the statutory auditor watch closely.
4. Multiplying sub-accounts without consistency. One account per customer is useful; one account per invoice turns the trial balance into a maze and complicates review.
5. Forgetting class 8. Off-balance-sheet commitments (guarantees, sureties) must appear in the notes. Their omission is a frequent source of audit findings.

Our reading is simple: mastering the PCG classes is not an academic requirement, it is an internal control tool. An owner who knows an account starting with 6 is an expense spots at a glance a misposted cost, a forgotten VAT entry or an investment wrongly booked as an expense. That reading autonomy is worth far more than memorising a nomenclature.

The underestimated risk lies in subdivision. Many companies customise their chart without a stable rule, then change a posting from one year to the next. The result: multi-year comparisons become false and management loses all reliability. A clean, consistent chart is, in practice, more valuable than an exhaustive one. This is also where the quality of a bookkeeping and accounting review engagement plays out: we standardise the chart, document the posting choices and lock in their stability.

Recently, an owner of a service SME called on us after two years of running their own software. Their income statement showed an incoherent gross margin. Tracing the entries back, we found that cost rebillings had been posted sometimes as revenue (class 7), sometimes as a reduction of expenses through the cost-transfer mechanism, with no consistent rule. Correcting the postings, based on the classes, restored a reliable reading of profitability, without changing the actual cash position. This kind of trade-off between two legitimate treatments is exactly what we settle case by case, alongside our corporate tax support.

Finally, a nuance that comes up often: the line between keeping the accounts and auditing them. Understanding the difference between a statutory auditor and a chartered accountant helps clarify who does what on your chart. As a firm registered with the French Institute of Chartered Accountants and also performing statutory audits, we bring both perspectives.

Hayot Expertise tip. Before customising your chart, set four or five written posting rules and keep them across several years. Stability beats exhaustiveness. Have your configured chart validated by your accountant at launch: half an hour invested at the start saves hours of reprocessing at closing.