Chart of accounts

QB premier is fine

the CoA is not specific to a school or other business type, the best thing IMO is to get the tax form your school will file and create accounts to match the tax form entries.  Then for each area you can create sub accounts for detail.  When you have sub accounts, do not post to the parent, it acts as a summing account showing the total of all sub accounts

You did not state if this is a Public School; if so, your State likely has an accounting guideline with requirements.

If Private, you likely will be using the 990 tax form, so that is your guideline. You can grab the "UCOA" from the web; I will include a Cross-reference attachment for keywords, that is helpful.

"Also what version of quickbooks suites a school? Apparently our company had purchased quuckbooks premier edition"

Yes, that is Perfect. You are going to avoid micro-managing the accounts by the use of Class Tracking. I recommend the book Running QB for Not For Profits, by Kathy Ivens. Class is like Departments or Divisions, for financial reporting as P&L by Class = Columns, such as:

Elementary

Middle grades

Library

Special needs

Admin

Now everything you enter is Split, allocated and Class Tracked. Example:

Supplies purchase is split, all as Classroom Materials, but each line is Class tracked for which Class = total just spent at Staples for Library vs Admin vs Middle grades. Payroll is Class tracked to allocate paycheck details and employer expense by class.

Grants are also tracked as Customer and Split by Class. Example:

Food Grant for Elementary Class, Customer Name is County. All info is Class tracked and Job tracked. This is explained in that book.

You needed Premier, because Pro does not manage Balance Sheet by Class.

The forum won't let me attach an Excel cross reference.

Use google to find this:

ucoa keywords