Does your business still prepare your consolidated accounts manually? Maybe you’ve acquired new subsidiaries or launched new group entities organically over a number of years. As a result, you may now be faced with late nights pouring over endless spreadsheets and doing repetitive tasks to consolidate their accounts.
Has your group expanded over time—through acquisition or organic growth—resulting in multiple entities to manage? If so, preparing consolidated accounts might still mean late nights with cumbersome spreadsheets and repeated manual tasks. You’re not alone.
For many group finance teams, preparing group consolidated accounts remains one of the most time-consuming and frustrating processes. And in today’s world of flexible and hybrid working, teams are increasingly asking:
This article answers these key questions and outlines how finance leaders can simplify group consolidation and drive efficiency through modern tools.
Group consolidation refers to the process of combining the financial statements of multiple entities within a corporate group so they can be reported as one unified organisation.
Under UK company law and international accounting standards, consolidated financial statements are mandatory for parent companies with one or more subsidiaries—unless the group qualifies for exemption, such as being classified as ‘small’.
If you’re unsure whether your group structure requires consolidated accounts, it’s advisable to consult with a professional accountant.
That said, compliance is only part of the story. Regularly preparing consolidated accounts enables finance teams to provide management and stakeholders with accurate, timely insights—supporting more informed strategic decisions.
For finance teams managing subsidiaries, consolidation is often a monthly burden. From partial ownership arrangements to multi-currency transactions, the variables are complex. If you’re still relying on Excel, you’re likely dealing with a process that’s stressful, inefficient, and error-prone.
Manually preparing group consolidated accounts often leads to three main challenges:
Forward-thinking finance teams are turning to cloud-based accounting platforms to simplify and automate group consolidation. Here’s a roadmap to help modernise your process:
Automation eliminates the need for repetitive data gathering and enables real-time consolidation across any number of entities—including nested sub-groups. With the right platform, consolidating complex structures becomes faster and more accurate.
When a parent company pools cash across entities for investment purposes, intercompany loan balances and interest allocations need to be correctly recorded. This ensures transparency and accurate reporting across the group.
Group entities often operate in different base currencies. Effective consolidation software automatically translates financials into the group’s base currency using the correct exchange rates (e.g., period-end for balance sheets, average for income statements).
AccountsIQ’s Central Currency Management feature makes this effortless by maintaining exchange rates in one central location and applying them consistently across subsidiaries.
Group-level accounts payable and payroll costs must be correctly allocated to relevant entities. With automation, this can be done in just a few clicks, removing manual calculations and potential inconsistencies.
Accurate, timely reporting—both at entity and group level—is essential for strategic decision-making. Comparing actuals vs budgets across the group helps finance leaders shape forward-looking strategies.
Intercompany invoicing is often a reconciliation headache. AccountsIQ simplifies this by automating intercompany charges—creating mirrored invoices between entities and ensuring they're balanced and auditable.
At month-end, all foreign currency bank and ledger accounts must be revalued. AccountsIQ automates unrealised gains/losses postings using centrally maintained exchange rates—ensuring clean group-level eliminations.
Some group structures include partial ownership of entities. AccountsIQ automatically handles minority interests and generates the appropriate consolidation entries, reducing manual intervention.
You need the ability to post journals at group level without altering underlying subsidiary accounts. This provides more precise control over group-wide reporting.
To maintain data integrity, close both subsidiary and parent ledgers at period-end. This flags that the accounts have been consolidated and prevents any retrospective changes.
Thoroughly review consolidated outputs before distribution. With full visibility into every level of your group structure, you can investigate anomalies and issue accurate financials with confidence.
More finance teams are choosing to move away from spreadsheet-based processes to reduce risk and improve efficiency. When evaluating your options, consider:
“AccountsIQ’s main success for us has been the efficiency it has brought to the business. The product is a good fit for our pretty complex accounting requirements and gives us real value for money. We can consolidate 80 entities in a few minutes.”
— Finance Director, Salamanca Group
Timely, accurate data is key for modern finance teams—not just for compliance, but to support strategic planning and performance management. Instead of waiting until all reconciliation is complete, you need instant access to insights.
AccountsIQ tackles this with a unique group reporting model: subsidiary-level ledger codes are mapped to group-level summary codes, enabling consolidated insights with full drill-down capability. This allows for multi-dimensional analysis by location, department, or product—on demand.
You also gain access to a library of over 250 pre-built reports and dynamic dashboards tailored by role.
With this level of insight, you can consolidate and report as frequently as needed—not just at month-end—empowering your team to deliver real-time financial intelligence.
As your organisation evolves, your finance system must adapt. Whether onboarding new entities, integrating with your CRM or using Open Banking for real-time cashflow visibility, ensure your chosen platform is scalable and API-enabled.
A successful implementation depends on having the right technology—and the right support. Change projects are smoother when you choose a software partner that’s collaborative and responsive.
Once in place, the benefits are transformative: fewer manual processes, better data, and a motivated finance team focused on value-added work.
When it comes to consolidating complex group accounts, we’ve yet to meet a finance team that misses Excel.
Explore how AccountsIQ can transform your group consolidation process.
Download our Multi-Entity Consolidation Checklist and discover how our platform supports complex group structures with ease.
Partnering with a venture capitalist (VC) gives scale-ups the funding and expertise they need to grow their infrastructure and move to the next stage of their development. Running out of cash or failing to raise new capital is the #1 reason start-ups fail.
Partnering with a venture capitalist (VC) gives scale-ups the funding and expertise they need to grow their infrastructure and move to the next stage of their development. Such partnerships are a crucial step for many businesses looking to turn an innovative idea into a sustainable company. In fact, according to research from the CBI, running out of cash or failing to raise new capital is the #1 reason start-ups fail.
Potential investors will evaluate your ability to acquire customers, grow revenue, and (ultimately) deliver profits. To help them make those assessments, your finance team will need to provide:
AccountsIQ financial reporting software provides advanced accounting and reporting, on a Cloud platform, to help fast-growing companies in two ways:
At the click of a button, you’ll know your:
To make informed strategic growth decisions, you need the flexibility to slice and dice your financial data. For example, you might need to compare:
You’ll also need sophisticated forecast and scenario planning tools, for example to:
Here’s how an IT consulting firm could use the data in their AccountsIQ platform to gain relevant, real-time insights into their business operations and performance, by answering critical questions, such as:
