How to improve your intercompany reconciliation

More and more enterprises are operating globally. They set up subsidiaries abroad to open up new markets and to satisfy the needs of local customers. These subsidiaries need to be consolidated and integrated into the consolidated financial statements. One of the biggest hurdles in this process is obtaining the data from the financial statements. That’s because many corporate groups also operate a plethora of fragmented accounting systems used by their subsidiaries to post their data. Adding to this is the fact that all of the companies rely on Excel files, which have to be collected manually by the Corporate Accounting department – a highly time-consuming and error-prone exercise.

Before the data can be consolidated, it first needs to be collected, reconciliated, validated and standardised. All too often, groups lack the ability to directly access the financial accounting systems of foreign subsidiaries. The subsidiaries often use different ERP systems and business intelligence tools. Adding to the complexity is the fact that the various stand-alone solutions often do not permit standardised indicators over the entire reporting process. That carries a cost in terms of reliability and security.