CFOs and Financial Controllers of multi-entity companies, who need to report on and analyse consolidated accounts, frequently describe their #1 pain point like this:
Completing my consolidated month-end accounting in Excel is frustrating, time consuming and error prone. It doesn’t even generate all the reports my business needs in a user-friendly way.”
Does that sound familiar?
The other issues and complexities they describe when creating consolidated accounts, depend on the size and ownership structure of the group. However, they often include:
- Partial ownership. The ability to handle not just the minority holding, but also dates of purchase/sale or change of ownership.
- Multi-tier consolidations. For example, when a subsidiary entity that is itself a Group Company with its own group of subsidiaries (again some of these may be partially owned).
- Consolidation at the company sub-structure level. For example, where there are divisions, branches or departments within each company, and you need these results consolidated at the Group Company level.
- Multi-currency trading. Where multiple entities operate in numerous currencies and have multiple bank accounts in those currencies; or subsidiaries have a base currency that differs from that of the holding company.
Are your spreadsheets bursting at the seams?
Managing this level of accounting complexity in Excel is a nightmare. It’s time-consuming extracting the relevant information from multiple month end accounts. It’s also highly error prone, because the Excel formulae have few checks and balances to ensure compliance back to all the original consolidation entities.
The frustrations don’t stop once you’ve produced the management reports. First, there’s all the last-minute postings, adjustments and accruals to deal with; that probably requires another re-run. Then there’s the inevitable structural changes to be made every time the Group acquires a new entity.
AccountsIQ makes consolidated accounting and reporting a breeze
We designed our cloud accounting software as an affordable solution to all these consolidation challenges. We enable Group finance teams to simply and accurately:
- Consolidate Budgets and Revised Budgets up to the Group level (and to any “Parent” Companies in a multi-tiered consolidation)
- Produce reports using budgets, revised budgets, actuals and variances rolled up from subsidiary level with drill down capabilities
- Consolidate Sales and Purchasing data and report at group level, again with the ability to drill down to subsidiary level
- Post inter-company transactions within the group, or make adjustments at group level to eliminate inter-company profits
AccountsIQ only charges for the number of entities on the system
With AccountsIQ, each entity has its own SQL database on the system. This is something that’s unique to the Cloud Accounting software universe. As we only charge for the number of entities on the system, the cost is likely to be a lot less than other systems.
Our SQL database architecture also means we can create a huge range of personalisations to each database. In partnership with our customers, we build a system that suits their individual business structure and workflows. It also offers more sophisticated reporting capabilities.
Here are 3 AccountsIQ customers who already save a week a month with their automated consolidation and reporting
Merchant Bank, Salamanca Group, switched from Sage 50 to AccountsIQ. They now spend around five minutes a month consolidating their 80 entities and producing monthly management report packs.
Read the Salamanca Group case study.
Global Geoscience Consultancy, Getech, enjoyed significant growth – but inherited four legacy accounting systems across the group. Moving to AccountsIQ saved them a week every month with their group reporting alone. They also made efficiency improvements in other core processes.
Financial Services Group, Apera Asset Management, has seven legal entities across Europe. Before switching to AccountsIQ, they used a combination of Xero and Excel; exporting data from various systems and in different currencies, then bringing it together in Excel. Find out how AccountsIQ saved them from accounting nightmares at 2am!
Read the Apera Asset Management case study.
Find out how AccountsIQ could save you a week a month by simplifying consolidation and discover our multiple entity account consolidation checklist.
Watch our Multi-Company Accounting & Consolidation Webinar Recording
