Use this workflow to create consolidated opening balances in your parent QBO Company if you desire to have consolidated financials beginning in a period other than the true first period of transaction across all your companies. Otherwise, you can skip this workflow use the periodic Run Consolidation workflow beginning with the very first period of transaction across all your companies.


TYPICAL WORK FLOW

  • If you need to load opening balances into your parent company, select Opening Balance under the Setup menu to get started
  • Once you have selected your desired opening balance period, click the <Lock OBAL Period> button to lock the period – the period can be changed at any time by simply clicking the <Change OBAL Period> button next to the opening balance period selection
  • With the OBAL period locked, a matrix table will display to control the work flows required extract, translate and post opening balances to your parent company in QuickBooks Online
  • Any connected subsidiary company that has balance activity for the opening balance will be displayed in the table
  • The next step in the workflow is to extract account balances for the opening balance period from each of your subsidiary companies. Simply select all companies that appear in the table and click the <Run Workflow> button. A progress indicator will display in the table while balances are being extracted followed by a date/time stamp when completed along with confirmation the extract was successful or incomplete
  • After balances are extracted, all remaining steps in this workflow (Review, Confirm and Posting) are performed at the individual company level
  • The Review work flow is designed to provide you with side-by-side trial balance reports of what was extracted from QuickBooks in the subsidiary chart-of-accounts, alongside what those extracted balances look like when translated into the parent company chart-of-accounts (Consolidation JE)
  • To post the consolidation JE for the subsidiary to the parent QBO company, you can either click the <Confirm and Post> button or click on <Review> followed by the <Confirm> to post


  • Opening Balances for Foreign Currency Subsidiary Companies
    • If you are using the Opening Balance workflow for a foreign currency company, you will see an F/X rate entry box in the Review screen Journal Entry table. Simply enter the appropriate translation rate for the opening balance which would typically be the period ending rate for the period prior to the opening balance period selected. For example, an opening balance period of Jan-2021 would use an F/X rate as at 12/31/2020
    • After entering the rate, click <Apply Rate> and you will see local currency balances translated to the home currency of the parent
    • All balance sheet accounts are translated at the rate entered. You may need to modify some of the translated balances to account for historical exchange rate differences. In this situation, simply post the JE to the parent QBO company, then go into the parent QBO company, pull up the OBAL JE that posted for that company and modify the affected balances to correct for historical adjustments with an offset booking to your currency translation adjustment or gain/loss account as needed


  • Journal entry posting details include:
    • Journal entries are posted to the division name our system created in your QuickBooks Online parent company for each of your connected subsidiary companies
    • The journal posting date is default set to the 1st day of the month/year of the Opening Balance Period selected. For example, an opening balance period of Jan-2021 will post to 1/1/2021
    • To make it easy to identify the journal entries our system posts to your parent company, we use the following syntax for the journal entry number for opening balance related entries:
      • #OBAL-YYYY-MMM-DIVISION_NAME
      • Note that the division name may be truncated in the JE number due to Intuit defined character length limits


  • If there are additional subsidiary companies in the work flow table, you will need to extract, review, confirm and post the translated balances for each one to enable a fully consolidated opening balance for your parent company in QuickBooks Online
  • When you have completed posting of translated account balances for all subsidiary companies listed in the work flow table, you now have a fully consolidated opening balance for your parent company in QuickBooks Online
  • All consolidated and segment reporting for your parent company is performed in QuickBooks Online only as our system does not compile, store or report on any consolidated account balances
  • Remember, you can modify most reports in the QuickBooks Online report center to filter or display by Division (i.e. your subsidiary companies) so you have complete flexibility to see your parent company opening balance fully consolidated or segmented by subsidiary
  • If you are satisfied with the opening balances for your parent company in QuickBooks Online, you have completed the set-up requirements and are ready to start running period consolidations
  • If your opening balances are not correct and you need to make changes after you have posted translated balances to the parent company in QuickBooks Online:
    • First, go to the journal entry screen in QuickBooks Online and search under recent journal entries to locate the desired journal entry the system posted and delete it
    • Once the journal entry(s) have been deleted, return to the Opening Balances work flow under the Setup menu
    • If you need to change the opening balance period, select the <Change OBAL Period> button to re-open and select a new period
    • After you re-lock the OBAL period, the work flow table will display, and you are able to re-run the work flow starting with the readiness check or bypass if your confident nothing has changed and re-run the extract balances work flow
    • If you have several subsidiary companies displayed and you only need to re-run the work flow for one subsidiary company, you can uni-select that company and re-run the extract for that company only
    • After the extract has completed, follow the same routine to review, confirm and post the translated balances into the parent company in QuickBooks Online
    • Remember, if you are re-posting translated balances for a subsidiary company, you must delete any prior journal entry(s) that were posted for that subsidiary company. Our system will not overwrite anything that was posted already to the parent company



QUICK TIPS TO REMEMBER

  • To facilitate review and tie-off of extracted account balances and translation of account balances into the parent chart-of-accounts, the trial balance tables in the both the review and confirmation work flows can be downloaded to excel or printed as a pdf. Download and print functionality is controlled by icons in top right corner of each table
  • Another useful feature to assist with review and confirmation is the ability to control what accounts display in the tables. There is a drop-down above the table to limit the display of accounts to show only active or non-zero. This is helpful for older companies that may have a large chart of accounts but many accounts are no longer active or have zero balances
  • All workflows in the matrix table (readiness, extract, review, confirmation and posting) will display a time/date stamp after the work flow has run along with a success/failure indicator so you are able to keep track of your progress. This is helpful for situations where there may be a large number of subsidiary companies to work through, multiple people involved in the end-to-end work flow or simply a process flow that happens over several days vs one session