California's cities, special districts, and joint powers authorities all report to the same State Controller, follow the same GASB standards, and answer to the same kinds of auditors. Yet almost every one of them keeps its books in a chart of accounts it invented for itself. Each year that difference is paid for again: in mapping workbooks rebuilt by hand, in consultants hired to translate local codes into state report lines, and in staff who have to relearn the numbering whenever they change employers.
The California Agency Chart of Accounts (CACOA) is a free, open standard that removes most of that translation work. It gives agencies a shared structure for funds, departments, functions, and objects, and it publishes the connection from that structure to the State Controller's Financial Transactions Report (FTR) in advance. An agency that codes its ledger with CACOA gets its FTR placement from the code itself instead of from a mapping exercise every year.
What the CACOA is
- A multi-dimensional chart of accounts: fund, department, function, and object are separate codes that each mean one thing.
- Reporting-first: every posting code has a published destination on the Cities FTR.
- Adoptable in steps: an agency can map its existing chart to CACOA, adopt it for new accounts only, or convert fully.
- Extensible: reserved local-detail ranges let an agency add its own detail without breaking statewide rollups.
- Open: the tables, crosswalk, and documentation are published under the MIT License and may be used, changed, and shared freely. The license does not cover any agency's financial data.
What the CACOA is not
- It is not a mandate. No agency is required to use it.
- It is not a replacement for GASB standards or for professional judgment.
- It is not a software product. It works with any ERP that can store a segmented account string.
Who it is for
- Cities, which file the Cities FTR and get the most direct benefit from the published crosswalk.
- Special districts and joint powers authorities, which can use the same structure for budgeting, audits, and their own State Controller reports.
- Any public agency outside the school system. Schools already have a statewide chart, the Standardized Account Code Structure (SACS). The CACOA exists partly to ask why local governments should not have the same advantage.
Why it matters
Compliance work does not deliver a single pothole repair or library hour. Every dollar spent reconciling one agency's private numbering system to a state form is a dollar not spent on local programs. A common chart lets the state, auditors, software vendors, and neighboring agencies all read the same books the same way. The CACOA is published as a working proposal for that common chart: complete enough to use today, and open to correction by anyone who uses it.