Category trees that match how people buy

A chart of accounts is a filing system for bookkeepers. It is allowed to be ugly. A category tree used in a briefing is a language for people who buy salt, reagents, toner, and hired plant. If those people cannot find their own week in the tree, the briefing will become a debate about the tree.

Start in the room that receives the goods

Walk the dock, the pharmacy cage, the fuel pump, the stationery cupboard. Write the names they already use. Only then sit with the codes. You will find honest mismatches: glassware coded as “household”, toner coded as “IT services”, hired vans coded as “fuel”. Those mismatches are findings, not errors to hide in a footnote.

Depth has a cost

Five top-level families and a handful of children will survive a committee. Forty children will not. We keep a working file with more detail than the boards. The boards show what a conversation can hold in two hours.

Georgian and English on the same branch

Some clients brief in English for a donor or a parent company. The tree should still be stable in Georgian, because that is the language of the invoices. We print both where needed. We do not invent English category names that the dock would not recognise.

If you want this work done with you in the room, that week sits inside the full spend review, not as a poster we mail in isolation.