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Intercompany feature

The group's books, consolidated inside SAP Business One

Bring every company's journal entries into one consolidation company and run the standard reports for the whole group, across charts of accounts and currencies.

  • Many levels
  • Three exchange-rate methods
  • From $240 per user a year
Intercompany · Consolidation · Q3
€12.4mGroup revenue
€1.1mEliminated
4Currencies
CompanyCur.RateRevenue (EUR)
Sample Group GmbHEUR—6,120,400
Sample Group Pte LtdSGDAverage3,480,900
Sample Group Inc.USDClosing2,790,300
Minority interest 30 %−837,090

Trial balanceProfit and lossBalance sheet

The problem

Month-end in spreadsheets

Each company closes its own books, often with its own chart of accounts and its own currency. Someone then exports trial balances, translates currencies, maps accounts and removes trade between the companies in a spreadsheet, every month, and again when a number changes.

Without Intercompany
  • Trial balances exported from every company.
  • Currencies translated and accounts mapped in a spreadsheet.
  • Trade between the companies removed by hand.
How it works

Three steps, then the group's reports

Intercompany consolidates in a company of its own, inside SAP Business One.

  1. Share the chart of accountsThe consolidation company's chart of accounts is distributed as the group's.
  2. Map each company's accountsEach subsidiary's accounts are mapped once to the group's accounts.
  3. Consolidate the journal entriesOn demand or on a schedule. The trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet then run in SAP Business One's standard formats.
Group consolidationTrial balance · P&L · balance sheet
▲ 3 · consolidate
US consolidationUSD · regional level
UK companyGBP · held 70 % · minority 30 %
▲ 2 · map accounts   1 · share the chart
New York companyUSD · own chart of accounts
Texas companyUSD · own chart of accounts

Companies roll up level by level; each is translated at historical, closing or average rates.

Benefits

Close the group's books with less work

Any chart of accounts

Companies with different account structures consolidate into one.

Any currency

Accounts are translated at historical, closing or average rates.

Many levels

Consolidate regions first, then the group, as your structure is built.

Standard reports

Trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet, in SAP Business One's formats.
Details

What consolidation covers

From the first mapping to the group's balance sheet.

Multi-level consolidation

Each level of the reporting tree gets its own consolidation company, registered in the landscape with the company type "Consolidation". Companies report upwards into one or more of them, and the runs go from the lowest level to the top. Branch codes and names travel with the entries to every level.

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Different charts of accounts and currencies

The group's chart of accounts is built in the consolidation company and sent to the subsidiaries through "Chart of Account Distribution". Each subsidiary maps its active accounts to it once, by hand, automatically for an identical chart, or with a Microsoft Excel template. Figures arrive in the local or system currency and are translated into the consolidation currency.

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Three exchange-rate methods

Historical uses the rate of the posting date and is the default, closing uses the rate of the last day of the period, and average uses a rate entered per currency in the consolidation company. The method is chosen per account in each subsidiary, one at a time or for a range of accounts. Gains, losses and rounding go to accounts set in the consolidation company.

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Minority interests

A "Consolidation Percentage" is set for each company in the landscape: the share of it the group holds. That share of each account is taken into the consolidation company. A company can report into more than one consolidation company, with shares that add up to no more than 100.

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Journal vouchers

One checkbox in the administration console, "Replicate Journal Voucher", brings the subsidiaries' journal vouchers into each consolidation run. User-defined fields on vouchers can come along. Since version 55, their transaction codes are carried too.

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Projects and transaction codes

Project master data is replicated through the company template, and the same project records must exist in every branch and consolidation company. Since version 55 the transaction code master is replicated as well, and the codes on each journal entry and voucher are copied into the consolidation company for reporting.

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Scheduled consolidation

In the consolidation company, a start date, a daily, weekly or monthly frequency and a time per branch set the schedule. The administration console shows the mode, the last run and any journal entries that did not arrive. Manual runs wait while the schedule is started.

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Intercompany eliminations

When every revenue account in the branch companies has the account type Sales, each intercompany sale arrives in the consolidation company with an elimination flag and the codes of both companies. The Document Journal report, filtered on that flag, lists the internal sales from which the elimination entries are posted.

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Export and import

In a manual run, journal entries are exported from the subsidiaries for a posting-date range and imported into the consolidation company, for all companies at once or one at a time. Each file is removed once imported. A monitor report lists entries that did not arrive and, since version 54, exports to Microsoft Excel.

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Videos

See it in SAP Business One

Financial consolidationVideo · YouTube
Setting up the consolidation companyVideo · YouTube
Projects and dimensionsVideo · YouTube

Videos play here. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.

Three steps
Three exchange-rate methods
Many levels
Standard SAP Business One reports