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Consolidation

Sage 50 Accounts Professional only

Consolidating companies is a great way of simplifying your accounts to present a high level overview of your data using management reports.

The consolidation option in Sage Accounts merges the financial data for more than one company into one set of financial accounts for the group of companies as a whole.

Note: To consolidate, you must have an unused company available to consolidate in. For example, if you want to consolidate 3 companies you need at least a 4 company licence.

What the process does

When you run the Consolidation option, the following processes occur:

• Any nominal codes that do not exist in the parent company are created.
• Sage Accounts looks at the monthly totals for every nominal code in each of the companies to be consolidated. These values are then totaled for each nominal code and updated to the parent company. This includes Actuals, Budgets and Prior Year values.
• A journal is posted in the parent company for the total on each nominal code.

The following limitations apply:

• You cannot consolidate companies with different base currencies.
• You cannot consolidate companies with different financial year start dates.
• Departmental budget information is not consolidated.
• Customer and supplier information is not consolidated.
• Chart of accounts is not consolidated.
• Because journals are posted for the totals, you cannot run transactional or drillable management reports like the transactional trial balance report.
• You cannot specify a date as the values are taken at the time you consolidate.
• You should ensure that the nominal code ranges are the same. For example, if you use the 4000 range for sales you should ensure this is the same in both companies. If they are not the same your financial reports may be incorrect.

Preparing the companies for consolidation

Consolidation is usually performed at month end or year end. You should ensure that all required transactions have been posted and that any month end routines have been run.

Preparing the parent company

The parent company is only used to consolidate the accounts of other companies. Each time you run the Consolidation option, the parent company's data is deleted, ready to accept the new consolidated data. Before consolidating, you must ensure the parent company has the same financial year start and base currency as the companies to be consolidated.

Consolidating the companies

1. Open the parent company.
2. Tools > Period End > Consolidation.
3. Select the companies to be consolidated > Consolidate > Yes.

Once the consolidation is complete, you can post any adjustments then print the required management reports.