After you have completed your initial set-up, you are ready to start running consolidations. If you used our system to load opening balances to your parent company in QuickBooks Online, you will find the consolidation work flow very similar with only some minor differences.


HOW IT WORKS

  • To perform a consolidation for a fiscal period, select Consolidation off the main menu
  • To get started, you must first select the fiscal period you want to consolidate. We offer you considerable flexibility over what period to consolidate:
    • fiscal month (i.e. calendar month in QuickBooks)
    • fiscal quarter, as defined by the fiscal calendar of parent
    • fiscal year, as defined by the fiscal calendar of parent
  • When you select a consolidation period, any connected subsidiary company that has balance activity in that period will immediately display in the work flow matrix table
  • Before you run a balance extract, we recommend you run the Verify Setup work flow across all companies in the table. See the Verify Setup section for more information
  • The next step in the work flow is to extract from each of your subsidiary companies, the account balances and activity for the consolidation period. Simply select all companies 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 work flow (Review, Confirm and Posting) are performed at the individual company level
  • The Review work flow is designed to provide you with side-by-side reports of what was extracted from QuickBooks in the subsidiary chart-of-accounts, alongside what those extracted balances and period activity looks like when translated into the parent company chart-of-accounts
  • For each account, you are presented with the beginning balance, ending balance and period activity, all in natural sign. This format enables you to easily tie-back to trial balance reports and/or trended P&L and balance sheets from QuickBooks reports
  • When you click on the <Review> button, the account balance and activity reports will display. To acknowledge you reviewed, click the <Reviewed> button and you will be returned to the work flow table and the date/time stamp will display in the table. Click the <Cancel> button to return to the work flow table with no date/time stamp acknowledgment.
  • You will not be able to advance to the confirmation work flow until you have acknowledged reviewing the balance and activity reports
  • The Confirmation work flow is designed for you to record an acknowledgment that the translation was done correctly and is ready for posting
  • When you click on the <Confirm> button, the same balance and activity reports will display. However, you now have the option to acknowledge the translation is correct by clicking on the <Confirmed> button below the table
  • You will not be able to advance to the posting work flow until you have confirmed the trial balance reports
  • The Posting work flow is designed to post a detailed journal entry of the translated account activity for the period directly to your parent company in QuickBooks Online
  • 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
    • Journal entries are posted to the last day of the calendar month of the fiscal period you selected. For example, if your consolidation period was 1st quarter and your parent company fiscal year begins January, the journal entry will post to March 31
    • 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 consolidation related entries:
      • #CONS-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 period activity for each one to enable a fully consolidated period for your parent company in QuickBooks Online
  • When you have completed posting of translated account activity for all subsidiary companies listed in the work flow table, you now have a fully consolidated period your parent company in QuickBooks Online
  • All consolidated and segmented 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 financials consolidated or segmented by subsidiary
  • If you are satisfied with the consolidated period financials for your parent company in QuickBooks Online, you can close the period and complete your reporting requirements
  • If 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 Consolidation work flow under the main menu
    • 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 period activity 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/activity as well as the translation of those account balances/activity into the parent chart-of-accounts, the report 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. This allows you to process the translation of a subsidiary into the parent company in QuickBooks Online when the subsidiary is ready and not wait for all subsidiaries to close their accounts