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What is the Financial Consolidation Process in the Accounting World?

So, exactly what is consolidation and consolidation accounting? In the accounting world, financial consolidation is the process of combining financial data from several subsidiaries or business entities within an organization, and rolling it up to a parent company for reporting purposes.

Financial Consolidation in the Accounting World

By itself, the term “consolidation” simply means to put things together.  But in the accounting world,  “financial consolidation” is a well-defined process that includes several complexities and accounting principles.

Here are the key accounting consolidation steps in the finance consolidation process:

  • Collecting trial balance data (e.g., Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Revenue, and Expense accounts) from multiple general ledger systems, and mapping it to a centralized chart of accounts

  • Consolidating the data following specific financial accounting rules and guidelines, such as U.S. GAAP or International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)

  • Reporting results to internal and external stakeholders

Key financial reports generated from preparing consolidated financial statements include the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows.

Financial Consolidation is More Than Just Adding Up Numbers

To those who aren’t familiar, financial consolidation might sound like simply adding up numbers from a group of companies—but it’s more than this. In financial consolidation, there are specific calculations and consolidation adjustments made as the numbers are combined from the parent company and its subsidiaries. This includes the following:

  • Foreign currency translation
  • Elimination of intercompany transactions and balances
  • Adjusting journal entries
  • Accounting for partial ownership

There are also different consolidation accounting methods that can vary depending on the controlling stake a parent organization has in a subsidiary. For instance, if the parent has a controlling interest in the subsidiary (more than 50%), then consolidation accounting is used. In this case, all the subsidiary company’s assets, liabilities, revenues, and expenses are combined into the parent company’s financial statements.

When a company owns a stake that is less than controlling but still allows it to exert significant influence over the business, it must use the equity method of accounting. Financial accounting rules generally define a controlling stake as between 20% and 50% of a company.

Under the equity method of consolidation in the financial consolidation process, the parent company reports the investment in the subsidiary on the balance sheet as an asset that is equal to the purchase price. Then when the subsidiary company reports its net income, the parent company reports revenue equal to its share of the subsidiary’s profits. So if a subsidiary has $100,000 in profit and the parent owns 30% of the subsidiary, the parent company would increase the value of the investment asset by $30,000 and record the $30,000 in revenue as an increase to retained earnings.

Using the Right Tool for the Job

In a large enterprise, the financial consolidation process is typically handled by the Accounting department, which is under the supervision of the Controller or VP of Accounting/Reporting, and ultimately overseen by the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

While financial consolidation and consolidation accounting were done manually for many years, in today’s world there are several types of financial consolidation software used for support and reporting.

  • General Ledger System – works well if an organization has a single ERP system, but becomes cumbersome if there is a need to collect consolidated financial statements and results from multiple systems used by different locations or subsidiaries.

  • Spreadsheets – while these are widely used by Finance and Accounting professionals, they weren’t designed to support a complex process, such as financial consolidation. Loading data from different systems is a manual process. With multiple tabs in a workbook, the spreadsheet can become unwieldy. Undetected errors can occur and spreadsheets don’t provide adequate audit trails regarding changes to financial results in the process.

  • Purpose-Built Financial Application – purpose-built financial consolidation applications are designed to integrate data from multiple sources, have specific functionality built in to handle the complexities of financial and debt consolidation, and typically have all the required security and audit trails. While these systems have historically been deployed in on-premises data centers, they are now available as Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions.

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