If you're like most financial pros, even the words “financial consolidation” can be enough to make you groan and roll your eyes.
If you didn’t know, financial consolidation is aggregating financial data from various entities into one condensed file, typically for reporting purposes. On paper, this task sounds straightforward. But, in practice, consolidation can take entire accounting teams hours – if not days – every month to manually collect, upload, and fact-check financial data across an entire organization. Worse, most major accounting platforms, including QuickBooks Online, don’t have native functionality to automate this process.
Further, if your organization does not have an automated system for consolidation, this issue will only become more difficult as your company grows.
Fortunately, there is consolidation software for QuickBooks available that can help make consolidation easier for your company.
Can you consolidate automatically in QuickBooks Online?
The simple answer here is no. You cannot consolidate your financials natively in QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks Online is a powerful cloud-based tool that helps over 102,000 companies keep track of their business’s financial records. While there are many benefits to using QuickBooks, the ability to easily consolidate multiple entities is not one of them.
This is mainly because QuickBooks does not offer any native functionality to support consolidation. QuickBooks’ Support Team has even admitted this on support forums. The support team’s best advice is to either commit to the lengthy process of consolidating manually or download a third-party integration.
The main issue is that you normally have to create different QuickBooks accounts for each entity under the corporate umbrella. This means that each entity’s financial information is siloed from others. While this may be advantageous for security purposes, it can quickly become headache-inducing when it comes time to consolidate QuickBooks companies.
We’ll discuss consolidation software for QuickBooks shortly. But first, let’s discuss the pitfalls of manual consolidation using QBO.
Manual Consolidation with QBO
If you do not use a consolidation integration for QuickBooks, your best option is to manually consolidate your books. For most companies, manually consolidating financial records from QBO is a three-step process:
- Exporting Data: The first step is to export all relevant financial files across the company(s), usually via a .csv file. Depending on the size of your company, this step alone can take several days to ensure that you have all the necessary data from each company that needs to be consolidated. If your company operates internationally, you must convert any currencies into your company’s standard currency during this step.
- Uploading Data: From there, the accounting team must manually upload all financial data into a fresh spreadsheet while ensuring that the data complies with all regulatory rules and procedures. This process is monotonous and time-consuming and requires a fine-tooth comb to ensure that information is uploaded correctly. With so much manual copying and pasting, it’s easy for mistakes to occur during this step.
- Fact-Check For Errors: The final step is to ensure all information is correct now that it has been downloaded and consolidated. This means reviewing all the data to double-check that each number has been uploaded correctly and ensuring that nobody accidentally typed an extra “0” anywhere.
This is a fairly simplified version of how you can manually consolidate QuickBooks companies. In practice, financial consolidation is much more complicated than simply adding numbers together.
Depending on your company, you may need to include steps like multiple currency translations, adjusting journal entries, accounting for partial ownership, or eliminating inter-company transactions. The more frequently your company expects financial reports, the more time your accounting team will spend consolidating all the necessary information.
Granted, there are two benefits to consolidating QuickBooks companies manually:
- Cheap: This process is relatively inexpensive from a tooling perspective, relying on standard workplace tools like Google Sheets and Excel.
- Familiar: Almost all finance professionals are familiar with Excel or Google Sheets, meaning your accounting team does not need to learn to use any new tools.
That said, corporations must also consider the time it takes for the accounting team to manually consolidate this information each month and the accuracy of the final product.
For teams looking to consolidate QuickBooks companies, there are a few tools to choose from – including some that can consolidate data in under three minutes.
Tools to Enhance Financial Consolidation
There are several options when it comes to consolidation software for QuickBooks:
JustConsolidate
JustConsolidate is a financial consolidation tool that allows for reporting in QuickBooks Online, workflow control, and flexible reporting periods.
Pros:
- Reporting directly in QuickBooks Online
- Workflow control
- Flexible periods
- Multi-currency consolidation (additional fee)
Pricing: $15 per month + $5 per connected company. Extra features are available for $20 per month.
JustConsolidate offers a simple way to get started with financial consolidation. However, medium and large teams may find its functionality limiting. Additionally, JustConsolidate does not have any reviews on G2, so social proof on the solution's efficacy is in question.
Datarails
Datarails is a comprehensive software tool that offers a wide range of financial analysis and planning solutions.
Pros:
- Consolidation
- Financial reporting & monthly close
- Planning, budgeting, & forecasting
- Analysis & scenario modeling
- Data visualization
Pricing: Datarails does not disclose its pricing. However, The Finance Weekly estimates that plans start at $24,000 per year.
Users on G2 Crowd gave Datarails 4.7/5 stars with 147 reviews (at the time this was written). Reviewers praised the company’s Excel integration but criticized it for being a complex tool that’s difficult to learn. Datarails provides a broad range of services that might be a good fit for large companies with plenty of bandwidth. But, if you’re mainly interested in consolidation, it may be more than you need.
LiveFlow
LiveFlow is one of the leading solutions for consolidation, highly regarded for its customizable, no-formula solution.
Pros
- Integration with Google Sheets and Excel to convert them into live FP&A dashboards. This allows for forecasting, budgeting, and reporting in tune with your consolidation efforts.
- Financial consolidation in under three minutes.
Pricing: LiveFlow’s consolidation packages can be customized to fit your needs. Learn more about LiveFlow’s customizable packages.
Users on G2 Crowd gave LiveFlow 5/5 stars with 187 reviews (at the time this was written). Reviewers praised LiveFlow’s ease of use and time-saving capabilities.
Setting Up QuickBooks Consolidation with LiveFlow (3 Simple Steps)
Ultimately, the tool that’s right for your team will depend on the level of functionality that you’re looking for. But if you feel that LiveFlow is a good fit for your company’s needs, then here’s what you can expect if you sign up:
*Don’t worry. LiveFlow is a straightforward, no-formula solution. So, this section will be refreshingly short.
Step 1: Open the LiveFlow web app
All of the magic happens within the LiveFlow App (and, yes, by “magic,” we’re referring to financial consolidation). Once you launch the app, your QuickBooks Online data will sync automatically.
From here, you can select the QuickBooks Online entities that you want to consolidate into a new statement.
Step 2: Map your accounts
The next step is to map your individual QBO accounts to your customized Chart of Accounts, which means categorizing the different accounts or parameters that you want featured in your new consolidated statement. This process is as simple as clicking on different parameters within your financial statements and tagging them.
Once you’ve mapped your accounts, LiveFlow will automatically create a live spreadsheet that reflects your new QuickBooks consolidated financial statements. Your financial statements power this dashboard, so if you make any changes to them, your LiveFlow dashboard will update in real time.
Step 3: Customize your consolidated statement
You’re already basically done! From here, it’s an ongoing process of perfecting your dashboard over time. In fact, this is one of the things that clients love most about working with LiveFlow.
LiveFlow’s dashboard is incredibly customizable. Once you’ve selected your entities and mapped your accounts, you can tweak your statements by setting different parameters or filters. For example, you can filter data by company, date range, pay periods, currency, and dozens of other criteria. One dashboard. Lots of options.
Additionally, you can “drill down” into metrics on your dashboard to see where each number comes from. If you think your report might contain a mistake, you can easily fact-check the data to ensure everything is shipshape.
Analyzing and Reporting Consolidated Financials
The best thing about LiveFlow's consolidated reporting is that it's totally customizable to your needs as a business. Choose which report data you pull into your consolidated dashboard, update formatting, and create the dashboard of your dreams.
If that sounds like too much work, we can create a custom dashboard for you!
Real-World Examples and Success Stories
Many companies have found success by implementing LiveFlow’s consolidation tools for QuickBooks Online. Check out these two case studies:
Kalshi: The first regulated exchange dedicated exclusively to event contracts
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Before incorporating LiveFlow, Kalshi was spending endless hours manually consolidating its entities, a process that Kalshi’s Head of Finance, Yehuda Tenenbaum, admitted was needlessly inefficient. This lengthy consolidation process made reporting a nightmare. If a mistake was made along the way, the accounting team had to start the entire process over.
After incorporating LiveFlow, Kalshi found that information flowed much more smoothly throughout the organization, helping bridge the gap between the finance team and management.
For Yehuda, LiveFlow saves him hours of manual labor each month while drastically improving the quality of the reports he creates. Yehuda even went so far as to say that consolidation was “Impossible before LiveFlow.”
Read the full case study here
Nelo: providing credit solutions to those underserved by banks in Mexico and Latin America
Nelo operates two entities, one in the United States and one in Mexico. However, this small fact created a big problem for the company's Head of Accounting, Roberto Carroz.
Nelo’s dual citizenship meant that Roberto had to handle transaction rates in multiple currencies while staying on top of inaccuracies and delays caused by manual data entry. The consolidation process was clunky and took up too much of Roberto’s time – exacerbated by the fact that Nelo was a startup and, thus, dealing with all of the normal money issues that plague a startup.
At first, Roberto brought on an outsourced accounting team. But, despite the hefty price tag, this didn’t help much. Fortunately, this all changed once he discovered LiveFlow.
LiveFlow helped Roberto create a dashboard that automatically consolidated Nelo’s financials from QuickBooks Online, marking a turning point for the company. Integrating LiveFlow now helps Nelo reduce its consolidation turnaround time from 3 days to 15 minutes.
We hope you’ve found this article valuable when learning about how LiveFlow can create QuickBooks consolidated financial statements for your company. Interested in getting started? Book a demo with LiveFlow to learn more.
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