BEFORE GOING ANY FURTHER - IT IS IMPORTANT YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT WE MEAN BY 'PARENT' AND 'SUBSIDIARY' COMPANIES...most multi-entity businesses will have what they naturally think of as a LEGAL Parent company that has wholly or partially owned subsidiaries. However, in JustConsolidate, when we make reference to Parent and Subsidiary companies, we do so from a financial consolidation perspective. We expect that you will consolidate your existing QBO company financials each period into an entirely new QBO company that you will create and define as the consolidation 'Parent'.


For example, in the graphic below, Company A may be a LEGAL parent company of two wholly owned subsidiary companies, Company B and Company C and each company is represented by a separate QBO company. However, if you want to use JustConsolidate to Consolidate financials from the three QBO companies (A,B,C) you will first create a new QBO company (eg. Parentco) that will function as the new 'financial consolidation parent company'. You will designate that new QBO company in our system as the 'Parent' and companies A, B and C become subsidiaries. JustConsolidate is designed to provide consolidated financials of A, B and C in the new QBO company created, Parentco. From a traditional accounting system perspective, think of QBO companies A, B and C as 'subsidiary ledgers' and QBO company Parentco as a 'Consolidation' ledger.






*** QBO Subscription Levels ***

The subscription level of your subsidiary companies can be any level as JustConsolidate only reads data from those companies so no special requirement. However, the QBO company designated as your consolidation parent must minimally be at the QBO Plus level as JustConsolidate uses the Category (location) field to book the name of the subco in the consolidation JE and the category feature is only enabled in the Plus and Advanced versions of QuickBooks.



HOW TO USE THIS WORKFLOW


The objective of this work flow is to identify and connect your QuickBooks Online companies with our system. Connection authentication and authorization is all handled through Intuit's OAuth process so there is no data entry on your part. With just a few clicks, your companies are securely connected, your consolidation parent company is identified and your good to move on to chart-of-account mapping.


  • click <add company> button and follow the prompts through Intuit's OAuth service to authenticate and authorize the connection of each of your QBO companies to JustConsolidate
  • Entity Level - once all your companies are connected and listed on the display table, click the 'Set as Parent' link to designate which of your companies is the consolidation parent company, the other companies will default to subsidiary level
  • Consolidation Alias (Optional) - once your parent company is designated, you are able to enter an alternate display name to be used for your subsidiary companies when the consolidation entries are posted to the parent company. This enables you to keep the full legal name untouched in the QBO subsidiary company and use alternate names for segmented reporting in your consolidation company
  • Consolidation % - the default setting for consolidation is 100%, consistent with the equity method of accounting. However, if you wish to consolidate a subsidiary using the proportional method, you can set the desired ownership % (to two decimal spots of accuracy) and all the consolidation workflows (including opening balance sheet) will apply the % ownership to the trial balance before posting.
  • QuickBooks Name - when you connect a QuickBook company to JustConsolidate, the current meta-data for the company is pulled in and remains fixed as it typically does not change. However, if there are changes to the QuickBooks company name, currency or first period of transaction (OBAL Period), you can click the green circular arrow in the company name cell to force a refresh of this information in JustConsolidate. Refreshing this metadata will not have any effect on COA mappings or financials.
  • Realm ID - this is a unique ID code that QuickBooks assigns to each company (like a fingerprint). When JustConsolidate posts consolidation journal entries to your parent company, the JE name field for the entry will contain the Realm ID for that subsidiary so we are providing this data point to you to assist with JE searches later if necessary.
  • OBAL Period - for subsidiary companies, this is the first period of transaction that was detected when the company was connected to JustConsolidate (or upon refresh of metadata). For the parent company, this field will be blank unless you designate an opening balance sheet period (see Opening Balance Sheet workflow)
  • Connection Status - if the OAuth connection to your QuickBooks company breaks or times out (not common but does happen from time to time) you will see the connection status for the company switch from Connected to Disconnected and a re-authorize link display in-cell. You must click the re-authorize link to restore the connectivity of the company to JustConsolidate before attempting to run any workflows.