Consolidating foreign entities using Quickbooks
Leena Mansharamani (Corporate Controller, Deeya Energy)
| Jan 17, 2011We are a small late stage start up company about 6 months from commercializing our product. We are currently using quickbooks to maintain our books and records. we currently have 1 foreign entity. What is the best and most effective way to consoldiate the books using quickbooks without investing money into a new ERP system. Any suggestions (outside of using excel for consolidation) would be most appreciated.
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Answers
Company: NextEra Energy Resources
I have never used this application but I don't see why it wouldn't work for what you are looking to accomplish. They offer a free trial as well.
The Report Combiner, extracts data from 1 to 999 QuickBooks files and creates combining Profit and Loss statements and combining Balance Sheets.
In addition the Combiner can transfer the summary data to a new or existing QuickBooks "Consolidating" company file and set up each company as a separate class. After transferring the data into the QuickBooks file, you can run any of the QuickBooks reports on the imported data. The companies being combined don't have to be using the same charts of account.
You can also use the Combiner to merge summary data from one file to another file. Some accountants maintain a QuickBooks file that has their clients QuickBooks data in it plus their adjustments for depreciation, accruals, prepaid amortization etc. Using the Combiner, you can easily transfer a summary of a client's activity for a time period (say a month) into a second QuickBooks file containing accountant's adjustments
Company: Deeya Energy
Peter - this is very helpful. Thank you for such a detailed response and advice. Another question, do you know anyone who can help setup the books (assuming the report combiner works out)at a very cheap cost.
Regards,
Leena
Company: Lyris, Inc.
Leena,
Peter Lyons' recommendation is a good one - the tool is easy to use. However, you don't state which version of Quickbooks you're using. If you upgrade to QB Enterprise (at least versions 2010 and 2011), it supports multicurrencies (to support subsidiaries in international locations), and has a consolidations feature which creates Excel output from multiple QB Company files similar to the Report Combiner.
I believe the Report COmbiner has a demo version available to try it out...
Company: LogLogic
I've had great success (3 years of smooth audits) by just taking our US chart of accounts and adding two digits (followed by a hyphen) to each account (as needed) to represent each foreign sub (we have 4 foreign subs). I have our overseas accountants map their accounts to ours (with the 2 digit entity prefix) and prepare our monthly journal entry (include foreign currency translation). I then upload (using Dynamic Ventures General Journal Entry tool) each company's monthly journal entry into QuickBooks and do a quick review of the companies financials (...I have standard reports with a filter for each of the country's accounts). For the few elimination entries I have...I've created another entity with a two-digit prefix. We're a late stage startup as well using QB Enterprise 2009. The accounting staff (4 users) have found this approach to consolidation easy to work with (they never are confused by the extra accounts). Sure beats using multiple company files, etc.