What is Multi-Entity Management?
If you’re a CFO managing multiple divisions or subsidiaries, it’s imperative that you invest in the right software. Supporting the specific goals and nuances of each entity or division of a business is paramount, but in boosting performance, it’s important to understand how they contribute to the wider business picture.
Businesses are becoming more diverse and fragmented, which brings inevitable complexity. Financial management capabilities must, therefore, extend beyond financial consolidation to truly understand each subsidiary or division’s contribution and potential and underpin the visibility and forecasting necessary to drive growth.
Multi-entity management allows users to track the profit and loss and cash flow for all business units or segments. Crucially, financial insights on these units are combined and consolidated into one unified report to present a detailed overview of the entire business.
These detailed insights underpin the visibility, efficiency, and wisdom from which to inform strategy. By better understanding patterns, anomalies, and performance, we can track and prevent issues and capitalise on new opportunities.
How do Sage Intacct’s Multi-Entity Capabilities Work?
Sage Intacct recently came top in TechRepublic’s best overall solution for multi-business accounting, based on its robust reporting and easy visibility across different business profiles.
Not only does Sage Intacct provide an easy-to-navigate dashboard that sets out all financials and other key data, such as energy usage, for example, but it is also customisable and can be visualised according to the user’s preference.
Insights can be accessed in a click or two, allowing key information from each division to be compared or consolidated, as well as offering real-time data analysis across the general ledger and other custom reports.
Fostering a Dynamic, Seamless Operation: Aberdeen Performing Arts
With three very different iconic city centre venues: His Majesty’s Theatre, the Music Hall, and the Lemon Tree, and a growing customer base, Aberdeen Performing Arts is just one Sage Intacct customer seeing huge benefits from a multi-entity approach.
Since going live in 2023, the team has much greater visibility of costs and income at a venue-specific level as well as in consolidated accounts, which helps them understand each entity’s cash position and report appropriately.
Against a board-level mandate to empower budget holders with the autonomy to manage their cost bases, levers, and cash flow, empowering them to manage their own P&L and financial management has transitioned from a manual, one-dimensional set of processes to a dynamic, seamless operation.
The team can now look at their accounts by department, venue, event, or month, with the option to adjust and move things as mandated by the board or regulatory bodies for complete transparency and visibility.
What Are the Key Features CFOs Should Take Advantage Of?
In any modern accounting system, the ability to track multiple business divisions and units and view and map these against each other easily is key. Along with custom reports specialised for different industries and dynamics, dedicated analytics and collaboration tools via dashboards present insights in an easy-to-understand way. Because the system is so intuitive and simple to navigate, it can be used by financial and non-financial users alike.
Sage Intacct’s multi-entity management delivers:
Fast, Real-Time Dashboards & Reporting
- Live financials: these can be viewed at any time without having to wait for the close
- Entity Level Reporting: Close your books faster with instant consolidated reporting
- Aggregated Reporting: Zoom out from dashboards with a click for a holistic picture of your business across entities
- Umbrella Views: Zoom in to the entity level to view details
- Dashboards: Get customised, real-time updates on key metrics, track progress towards goals, and identify performance drivers at a glance
Simplified Inter-Entity Transactions
- Reduce errors and increase traceability
- Centralised inter-entity transaction setup of your due-to, due-from, and direct settlement accounts
- Self-balancing transactions
- A snapshot of your inter-entity entries as part of your journal entry
- A view across the business at any time
- Posted payments with inter-entity journals screenshots
Set-Up Made Simple
- Instantly set up new entities with configurable rules for inter-entity transactions, bank accounts, etc
- Easily consolidate new entities by inheriting existing lists, process definitions, and charts of accounts
- Quickly configure unique definitions for each new entity with total control
- Centralise assets or set up multiple charts of accounts
No More Flying Blind
The insights generated by Sage Intacct’s comprehensive multi-entity accounting capabilities empower your business, simplifying and streamlining reporting across an inordinate number of subsidiaries and divisions from a single shared environment.
This capability can mean the difference between flying blind and having the visibility to pave a profitable path forward.
If you’d like more information about how we can help you to start mastering multi-entity management using Sage Intacct, get in touch or call the team on 01606 871332 today.
