I’m currently managing three separate businesses in different locations, each with its own unique accounting requirements. My goal is to consolidate the financials of these businesses into a single view.
I’m aware of the division feature, but it quickly becomes confusing, especially since two of my businesses are in entirely different verticals, leading to cluttered financial statements.
What we really need is a “Company Group” feature that allows us to link accounts across businesses, similar to how we group accounts in the chart of accounts. This would enable us to see the consolidated financials of the group as a whole, while still keeping individual business transactions linked appropriately.
I believe many users manage multiple businesses on Manager Cloud, and this feature would be incredibly beneficial for anyone running two or more firms or outlets.
I think each business could have Charts of Accounts Groups, subgroups etc that may not match the setup of other businesses COA. They may not fit into each other to get a consolidated view of business.
If Divisions are not for you then create separate business and copy reports from each business and do formatting in spreadsheet.
They as in our case can also operate in total different jurisdictions with different base currencies and languages.
We have been doing this and it does not take that much time and more importantly works very well and getting a bit more engaged with the data also helps with analysis.
This workaround, while useful, would become cumbersome with regular updates and changing numbers. Managing group decisions and reallocating working capital or investments would be time-consuming with this method. Additionally, regulatory filings for the firm as a whole, rather than as separate outlets, would benefit greatly from such consolidated features. Many accounting software solutions in my country, such as Tally Prime etc. offer features for merging businesses or viewing consolidated financials. Such solutions are common in advanced accounting software and would significantly streamline these processes.
Group headings like Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Assets, and others are consistent across businesses, with only the ledgers differing. To better manage and differentiate between these, it would be beneficial to assign a unique identifying code to each account. This approach could help in tracking and consolidating data more effectively.
Additionally, there are proven methods available that can tackle this issue. Implementing a system with unique identifiers or exploring other established solutions could greatly enhance our accounting processes.
In that case why are you having issues with using divisions? Each account belongs to separate division whether its cash/bank account, customer, inventory item or any other account.
Yes, if you are after organizing your data/accounts then if there was a feature which can group these accounts by division (or by any other field like in Advance Query) by default so as soon as you click on tab you will get to see grouped data let’s say Division 1 and Division 2 and clicking on them will get you that specific division.
And one more thing is User permissions which needs enhancements.
I was using divisions for the purpose of consolidating businesses for a number of years, but about a year ago I abandoned using divisions for this purpose for the following reasons:
Due to the requirement to select the division at account level for Balance Sheet accounts it is necessary to have multiple accounts for suppliers, customers, etc to be able to allocate to the correct division where more than one of the businesses use the same supplier, customer, etc. The interdivisional loan is supposed to cater for this but once more than about 30 transactions this loan account becomes very unwieldly and very difficult to determine if it is accurate and/or needs correction of some transactions.
If using divisions for consolidation it then excludes using these for reporting separate divisions within each of the businesses and using Projects for this does not do it.
It is also obvious that others are not using divisions for consolidation as they have commented that they are using a spreadsheet for this purpose.
Based on this I am supporting the request by @Xcode for better functionality for Consolidated business reporting.
This could be achieved by creating reports that can draw from the ledgers of each separate business. If this was made possible separate ledgers for budgets could be introduced which would improve the Budget functionality.
Manager does the core functions very well, but some of the other features that are not adequately meeting the needs of users are detracting from this.
I had a closer look at this and although not a fan of ERPs such as Tally noticed they made it very easy to “sum things up.” You simply have to create a Group and assign several businesses to it and it summarizes the results in key financial statements.
This would be much better than doing things manually (as now) and does things that Divisions can not do. For example use different base currencies per Division in case these are actually legally registered businesses in different countries. Like @AJD
Thank you all for your support and for backing this request! Your input and encouragement mean a lot, and it’s great to see our community coming together to make Manager even better. I kindly request the implementation of this feature because I truly enjoy using Manager for my businesses, and adding this functionality would make our work even better. @lubos@Tut@AJD@shahabb
I like the concept and I see the value of it but I’m reluctant to put this in ideas just yet since this have been discussed previously and it doesn’t seem to be on the developers’ radar so it doesn’t serve anyone good to give them false hope.
I will however, add my voice to yours and I will upvote this topic
I would not worry about that too much. There are quite a number of topics in the ideas category even dating back to 2017. It would help if you promote it, it does not mean it will ever be implemented but it may be considered once more.