Map your tax and GL accounts
The two sets of account mappings Landara uses, which accounts to create in Xero or QuickBooks, and how to choose between capitalising and expensing your stock.
Updated 4 August 2026
Most people never need this page. When you connect Xero or QuickBooks, Landara offers to add its own four accounts and map itself to them, which answers every question below for you. See Connect Xero or Connect QuickBooks Online. Read on if you would rather post into accounts you already have, or you want to change where something goes afterwards. Nothing Landara sets is locked.
Landara writes to your books in two different ways, so it keeps two separate sets of account mappings. Both live in the same place: Settings → Connections → Configure Tax Codes. Getting them right is the single most important setup step, because these accounts decide where your stock cost sits on the balance sheet and what hits your profit and loss.
The two sets, and why they are separate
| Mapping set | Applies to | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tax and GL codes | Bills and purchase orders you publish | Codes each line of the document Landara creates in your books |
| Journal accounts | COGS, revaluation, write-down, shrinkage and opening balance journals | The two sides of each manual journal Landara posts |
They are separate because they answer different questions. The first is "which account does this supplier invoice line belong to". The second is "which accounts does the movement of stock through my business run between". A bill and a journal are different documents with different lifecycles, so Landara never mixes them.
Set 1: tax and GL codes for publishing
One row per cost type. Each gets a tax code and a GL account.
| Category | On perpetual, map to | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Products | Your Inventory current-asset account | PO line items |
| Freight | Your Inventory current-asset account | Sea, air, courier, cartage, delivery |
| Duty | Your Inventory current-asset account | Import duty and tariffs |
| Clearance | Your Inventory current-asset account | Customs broker and documentation fees |
| Insurance | Your Inventory current-asset account | Cargo and marine insurance |
| Handling | Your Inventory current-asset account | Port, terminal and container handling fees |
| Import tax (recoverable) | 820 GST (liability) | Import GST or VAT you claim back |
| Other | Your Inventory current-asset account | Anything that does not fit above |
Import tax is the one row that does not go to Inventory, and the one cost Landara leaves out of your landed cost. Customs duty is a real cost of your goods, so it is capitalised like freight. Import GST or VAT is different: you claim it back, so adding it to your stock value would overstate your inventory by around 10% of the goods-plus-duty value, and it would never reach your BAS. Code this row to your GST account with the GST on Imports tax rate. Landara shows the excluded amount on the calculation so you can see exactly what was held back.
Xero users: do not post to account 630 Inventory. Xero classes it as an inventory account type, which is reserved for tracked inventory items, and it refuses to save any bill that uses one. Worse, the bill is created first and only fails when you try to approve it, with the lines showing no account at all. Create a Current Asset account instead, called something like "Inventory (Landed Cost)", and use that everywhere Inventory is mentioned below. Letting Landara add its own accounts avoids this entirely: Landara Inventory is created as a Current Asset for exactly this reason. Landara only offers accounts that actually work on a bill, so if 630 is missing from a dropdown, that is why.
There is exactly one dropdown where 630 is offered and is usually the right answer: Inventory before Landara, in the journal accounts below. Landara only reads that account, never posts to it, so the restriction does not apply.
Yes, freight and duty go to Inventory, not to an expense account. Landara allocates every one of these costs into your landed cost, so they are already inside the value of your stock and are released to the profit and loss by your COGS journal as that stock sells. Coding the freight bill to Direct Costs as well expenses it twice: once when you publish the bill, and again inside COGS. It also credits Inventory for freight that was never debited to it.
This follows the accounting rather than the invoice. A forwarder's bill feels like an expense because you are paying a service provider, but the cost you are paying for is bringing your stock to its present location and condition, which is part of what the stock cost you. The expense happens later, when the goods sell.
On periodic inventory (Products mapped to Purchases or COGS, and no COGS journals), code these to a direct cost account instead. The rule is simply that all seven rows should agree with each other. Landara warns you if they do not: mapping some rows to Inventory while a COGS journal is configured on others is the double count above, and mapping them all to Inventory with no COGS journal set means nothing ever releases the cost, so Inventory climbs forever.
Landara only offers tax rates that can apply to expenses, because every document it publishes is a purchase. You will not see sales rates such as GST on Income in these dropdowns, and that is deliberate: coding a supplier bill to a sales rate misreports your BAS.
Every category you receive needs an account
Landara never guesses an account. If you publish a bill containing a line whose category has no account mapped, publishing stops and tells you exactly which categories are missing, so you can set them and try again. Nothing is sent to your books until every line resolves.
This is deliberate, and it replaced a set of silent fallbacks. Unmapped lines used to borrow another category's account: an unmapped freight line would post to whatever account Products pointed at, which on perpetual is your Inventory account. A blocked publish is an inconvenience you notice immediately. A wrong account is one you notice at BAS time, with several bills already posted.
You do not have to map categories you never receive. Most importers only ever see freight, duty and clearance. But mapping all seven takes a minute and means an unusual line on one invoice never stops you mid-publish.
Products: capitalise or expense
This choice decides whether your stock sits on the balance sheet or goes straight to the profit and loss, and it has to agree with whether you post COGS journals.
| Approach | Map Products to | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Perpetual (default, recommended) | Your Inventory current-asset account (not Xero's 630) | The bill debits Inventory. Your COGS journal releases the cost as the stock sells. |
| Periodic | Purchases or a Cost of Goods Sold account | The bill expenses the stock on receipt. Your Inventory account does not move, so you should not post COGS journals as well. |
Do not mix the two. If your product purchases are expensed on receipt and you post a COGS journal, the same cost hits your profit and loss twice, and your Inventory account is credited without ever having been debited. Landara checks all seven rows for this, not just Products, and warns you in the settings modal naming the rows involved. It also warns the other way round: rows mapped to Inventory with no COGS account set means nothing ever releases the cost, so Inventory climbs forever.
Perpetual is the default because it is the only treatment that makes the rest of the module meaningful: it is what lets your Inventory account track your actual stock, and what makes the inventory valuation comparison worth reading.
Overriding it for a single purchase order
The org-wide mapping is the default, not a rule. When you publish a PO, the review screen has a Post product lines to control that applies to that whole purchase order. Use it for a one-off that should be expensed, or if you are mid-transition between treatments. It applies to every product line on the PO, never line by line, because the choice is an accounting policy rather than a per-item detail.
Overriding the account for a single charge line
The category mapping is the everyday default, not a rule. When you review a freight invoice, each line has its own Account and Tax code dropdown, so you can code one line differently from the rest of its category.
This exists because one category genuinely carries two treatments on one invoice. On a typical air freight bill, Freight and Cartage Destination are both the freight category, but international transport is GST free while the domestic leg after the place of consignment is taxable. No mapping can be right for both. Pin the odd one, and Landara remembers it against that charge description: the next invoice from the same forwarder arrives already coded.
Do not use this to code a charge to the account that describes it. Sending a DG handling fee to a "DG Fees" expense account while it is still in your landed cost counts the cost twice: the bill expenses it now, and your COGS journal expenses it again as the stock sells. It also credits Inventory for a cost that was never debited to it, so your Inventory account drifts down permanently. On perpetual inventory, every capitalisable charge belongs in Inventory, whatever the charge is called.
If you do pick a profit and loss account for a line that is in your landed cost, Landara takes that line out of landed cost for you and tells you so. That is the safe outcome: the cost is then expensed exactly once, into the account you chose. It also leaves a note on the line recording what was changed, which account triggered it, who was signed in and when, so the decision is on the invoice if your accountant ever asks.
Hover the ! at the end of the row to read the note. Once you have seen the explanation, you can dismiss the message for good from the notice itself, and only the per-line notes remain.
Change your mind and put the line back to your Inventory account, and Landara returns it to landed cost and clears the note, because the reason for it has gone. If instead you leave the line on a profit and loss account and tick it back into landed cost yourself, the note turns red and stays: that is the double count, and it is now a deliberate one.
The override is for four situations, and nothing else:
| Situation | Account to choose |
|---|---|
| Import GST or VAT you claim back | Your GST liability account |
| A charge that is not a cost of the goods, unticked from landed cost | A profit and loss account, such as demurrage or late fees |
| You run more than one inventory account | The right inventory account for those goods |
| You are on periodic inventory and post no COGS journals | Your direct cost account |
Reporting on a charge type
A common reason to reach for this is wanting to see, say, a year of DG fees. Coding the line to its own GL account looks like it would answer that, but it will not, even leaving the double count aside. A capitalised cost leaves its account when the stock sells, so a year end balance is only the fees sitting in stock you have not sold yet, not what you paid. Ask this question of your documents rather than your chart of accounts: Landara already records every charge line, its description, its vendor and its amount.
Set 2: journal accounts
Six accounts. Five are used by the journals Landara posts. The sixth is read only.
| Account | Used by | Side |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of Goods Sold | COGS journal, when stock sells | Debit |
| Inventory | Every journal Landara posts | Credit (or debit when stock increases) |
| Inventory adjustment | Revaluations and write-downs | The offsetting profit and loss account |
| Shrinkage | Stocktake losses and found stock | The offsetting profit and loss account |
| Opening balance offset | Opening a brand new accounting file, once only | The offsetting balance sheet account |
| Inventory before Landara | Nothing. Landara reads it to measure your opening difference | Never posted to |
Opening balance offset is only used if you start Landara before you start your accounting file. See Opening a brand new accounting file.
Inventory before Landara is the account your stock value sits in today, which is usually not the account Landara will post to. On a Xero file that is normally 630 Inventory: unusable on a bill, and exactly right here. Landara compares against it until you accept your opening difference, then switches to the account it posts to.
Leave it unset and Landara guesses, says so in amber on the valuation page, and refuses to let you accept an opening difference or post an opening balance until you confirm it. Both of those write a figure you cannot take back.
You will probably have to create two of them
Xero's default chart ships with Cost of Goods Sold, but nothing you can actually post a bill to for inventory, and nothing for inventory adjustments or shrinkage. Create them yourself:
- In Xero, go to Accounting → Chart of accounts → Add account.
- Create Inventory (Landed Cost) as account type Current Asset. Xero's own 630 Inventory is an inventory type account and cannot be used on a bill, so this is the one your bills will post to.
- Create Inventory Adjustment as account type Direct Costs (or Expense).
- Create Inventory Shrinkage the same way.
- Back in Landara, open Settings → Connections → Configure Tax Codes and click Refresh accounts.
- Your new accounts appear in the dropdowns. Select them and save.
- Set Inventory before Landara to your existing inventory account, usually 630. Do not skip this one: it is what makes your opening difference mean anything.
The Refresh accounts button exists for exactly this. You do not have to close the screen, reconnect, or reload: create the account in your accounting software in another tab, click Refresh, and your in-progress selections are kept.
QuickBooks tends to ship more of this out of the box, so you may find suitable accounts already exist. Note that QuickBooks stores account IDs where Xero stores account codes, so the two platforms are configured independently and neither overwrites the other.
The opening balance offset is different
You usually do not need to create this one, and it is deliberately not restricted to equity accounts.
| Platform | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Xero | 840 Historical Adjustment | Xero's own conversion account. Opening balances accumulate there and net to zero as your accountant finishes the migration. |
| QuickBooks | Opening Balance Equity | QuickBooks creates this account automatically for exactly this purpose. |
Do not use Retained Earnings. It balances, but retained earnings should only ever move through profit, so posting opening stock there overstates prior-period profit and your accountant will query it. Owner's capital is wrong too: opening stock is not a capital contribution.
If you would rather keep it separate from other conversion entries, create an equity account called Opening Balance Equity or Conversion Balances and use that instead. Either is fine.
