Combining & Consolidating Multiple Business Accounts

We are a startup with offices in a number of countries.

We want an accounting system that is nevertheless compartmentalised per country, such that only global officers see the accounts across all our markets/operating-countries (i.e. with the option to combine or consolidated accounts for different countries by the global officers), whilst staff in each country only see the accounts of the specific country they have been assigned.

In essence, we want a multi-user, multi-country, account. Is Manager the right option?

Currently Manager does have multi-user (server & cloud editions) and multi-business capabilities.
If your organisation is a single legal entity then Manager has tracking codes function where divisions (countries) can be reported individually or collectively. If your organisation is a multiple of separate legal entities then Manager can cater for them individually, but doesn’t have consolidation of entities currently but it a planned enhancement in the future.

Hi, thanks. The country operating entities are separate legal bodies but with common shareholding. So they all report to group of ‘global officers’. What is needed is the ability of the ‘global group’ to compute income and other results across the country entities thus obtaining a snap shot of the organisation as a whole.

Consolidations aren’t a current feature of Manager but it’s planned in the future. Your only option with Manager would be to export the data and combine within a spreadsheet program.

1 Like

Might you have a timeline of when this feature might be available as over time data growth will make manual consolidation unbearable.

The Developer needs to answer that question - I’m just a user.

Oh Ok. Thanks.

Consolidation will probably come the next year. It’s quite complicated feature and it’s not something that is generally supported in other accounting packages anyway. Most companies do consolidation manually.

Hi, in the meantime do you provide API access for something like: How Qvinci Works – Qvinci Software ?

A couple of work a rounds

  1. Set up in a spreadsheet a Master BS & P&L which caters for all the chart of account variations and then transpose the data from the respective reports into the columns for each business. This would also allow for a column to enter any intercompany elimination entries - that’s if you are going to worry about that level of detail. (This could be a good practise exercise before considering (2)

  2. As with (1) but set up the Master BS & P&L inside a Manager business called Consolidation, “not” the parent business. This business would “only” have the default tabs activated - Summary, Journal, Reports & Settings so there is no complications with Control Accounts. Then via Journal entry transpose the respective reports, possibly utilising the tracking codes feature. The Journals could either be monthly results (via cloning) or cumulative results (via overwriting)

These options would only suit month end reporting - not day to day reporting.

2 Likes

I am trying the Server Edition to setup all my businesses. I have 3 different companies at three different locations, but each of these companies deal with the other 2 - as suppliers and customers. So, I was trying to setup 3 different business, but after creating these companies, the other companies are not visible for me to set them up as supplier and/or customer. Can this be done? Or is there a workaround?

Each company is a separate data file. When you have one of the company’s open you can add the other companies as Customers or Suppliers via the Customers or Suppliers tab as you would add any other external Customer or Supplier for that business.

I’m a sole trader/sole proprietor.

I run different businesses all under the same government registration number (so I only submit one income tax return).

But each business has a different name, one has inventory, another is consulting etc etc.

I need to report various activities into a tax return, but not the breakdown by business. If ever I get audited by the tax office, I would then need to show details of each business.

A consolidation feature would be most helpful, especially if it was into a separate consolidated business account?

Quickbooks Enterprise has done this for over 10 years.

I really like your design and simple approach to the program.

Currently your best option in Manager is to create a new master business and then Journal the required balances of each individual business into the master business. You could use the tracking codes in the master business so that you can produce a P&L with both aggregate and each business side by side totals

Hi,

If we create a single business and use tracking codes for the branches, is there a way to restrict users to their specific tracking codes/branches?

thanks.

The level of control we have over user permissions is quite powerful, but alas it doesn’t have a distinction between different tracking codes.

Restrictions for users (Cloud/Server Edition) are currently at a number of levels:

  • Business Level - You can completely hide an entire business from a user.
  • CRUD Level - You can give someone read-only access, allow them to create but not edit later, or give complete access.
  • Tab/Module Level - You can completely hide tabs from a user (e.g. only show ‘Reports’, or just ‘Bank Accounts’ and ‘Sales Invoices’).
  • Cash/Bank Account Level - You can limit certain bank accounts / cash accounts to particular users.

This comment from @Brucanna (above) is probably relevant to you:

If your separate parts of the business are separate legal entities, then create them as separate businesses. That way, you’ll also be able to give users access to only specific businesses.

how exactly do implement this consolidation stuff using a consolidation business in manager. Please through mo light, a step by step guide would be very helpful. Thanks.

is consolidation available now or how much longer is needed

I’m not planning to implement consolidation of multiple business files. It would be impossible to do it correctly.

What I’m planning to do is improve divisional accounting so you can set for each asset and liability account what division it belongs to so you can get divisional balance sheet where loan accounts between divisions are automatically managed and of course consolidated balance sheet where loan accounts between divisions are filtered out.

In other words, if you have 5 related entities which you want to consolidate, you will set them up as single business is Manager and those 5 entities will be created as divisions within single business file.

5 Likes

I just would like to know weather there will a possibility to link the tracking codes to division. or it would be like group tracking same as what was discussed in the below subject