Customer Story
Preparing consolidated financial statements presents a major challenge to many municipalities and cities. Kaiserslautern City Council masters this task with the help of Lucanet’s consolidation software for municipalities and cities.
The industrial and university city of Kaiserslautern lies in the heart of the Palatinate region in the southwest of Germany. Like other municipalities, it is legally required to prepare consolidated financial statements and make them publicly accessible.
Lucanet’s special strength lies in the ability to transparently map the extensive data of the organization units involved by means of wizards. This allows us to achieve traceable consolidation within a very short time.
Alexandra Petrick
Coordinator of the “Consolidated municipal financial statements” project
The “Kaiserslautern City Council Group” comprises two subgroups each with its own financial statements, which are merged to form consolidated financial statements; proportionate consolidation is also performed within each subgroup. In addition, the capital shares of other shareholders are included in the consolidation process. Due to the complexity of the situation, Excel did not qualify as a solution. Time savings, legal certainty, and quality assurance were also important aspects for those responsible. Alexandra Petrick, coordinator of the “Consolidated municipal financial statements” project at Kaiserslautern City Council, explains that: “We had ruled out Excel as an option due to its susceptibility to errors when carrying out consolidation methods. We opted for Lucanet because it offers a very high degree of flexibility and personalization compared to other providers.”
In practice, Lucanet ultimately proved to be a real asset to Kaiserslautern City Council. “In particular, the wizard-based elimination of intra-municipality debt has made our work considerably easier when preparing the consolidated opening balance sheet,” says Petrick. “We were even able to clearly and traceably map our equity elimination and valuation according to the equity method. It is also helpful to be able to add your own comments and files as evidence using this solution. In this way, the auditing body can also access extensive data material directly from the system.”
Lucanet also improved the council’s reporting, consisting of the notes to the consolidated financial statements and the consolidated statement of accounts. Petrick emphasizes that: “For us, it’s definitely a massive weight off our shoulders to be able to create individual reports using the available formulas and thereby reduce work steps in the long term because binding templates can be created for the fixed asset schedule at the press of a button, for example.”