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Troubleshooting - Consolidated Group Reports

How to resolve issues with your consolidated reports

Written by Shem Bogusz

What can go wrong with Consolidated reports?

Sometimes, when reporting for multiple organisations, the numbers don't look the way you expected. There could be issues with eliminations, with currencies or with the right entities being selected. These problems could relate to actuals or budgets but the important first step is to think about possible causes and work through them step by step.

Most consolidation issues are caused by one of the following:

  1. Incorrect definition of the entities included

    1. Check in Report Tools, Consolidated Groups

  2. Wrong budgets or alternate budgets selected

    1. Are you using the group budgets, the main budgets or some other selection?

  3. Intercompany accounts not balancing

    1. Check your Account Tree or the elimination entity if you are using one

  4. Exchange rate differences not understood

    1. Review the rates and understand where differences come from

  5. Balance sheet out of balance

    1. Identify if it's actuals or forecasts and which entity and troubleshoot from there

Steps to resolve consolidation problems

  1. Confirm the Consolidated Group setup

    1. In Report Tools, Consolidated Groups, review the organisations connected to the group and confirm they are correct. Remove any unwanted entities or add missing organisations. Confirm the correct reporting currency is selected.

  2. Review your budget selection

    1. If you choose a consolidated group in your report filters, it will default to using the Group Budgets. These are defined in Report Tools, Consolidated Groups. Check these are what you intended to use.

    2. If you have chosen the Use main budgets option, that will use the budget defined as the main budget in each organisations (under Budget Tools)

    3. If you have manually selected the budgets, confirm they are the ones you are comparing the reports to.

  3. If your Intercompany Accounts are out of balance

    1. If you're using an Account Tree to group your intercompany accounts, turn off the Summary Only option on the header and then run the report to show all the detail accounts. This will usually quickly identify the mismatched accounts.

    2. Use the P&L Comparison, Balance Sheet Comparison or Trial Balance Comparison report to identify which entities are the source of the issue.

    3. If you're working with a manual elimination organisation, confirm that there is no discrepancy showing at the top of the Budgets & Actuals screen, indicating the entries are out of balance there.

  4. Understanding exchange rate differences

    1. When consolidating a balance sheet the exchange rate used to translate each entity's base currency to the reporting currency is the closing rate as at the reporting period. However, there are some special accounts or cases where a different exchange rate is used.

    2. Review the article on Currency Translation Differences to understand how this arises.

    3. Review the Currency Translation Difference report and the Currency Translation Comparison report to identify the details. You'll find these in the Troubleshooting section under Reports, Builder.

  5. Balance Sheet out of balance

    1. Identify if the issue is in your actuals or budgets

    2. Use the Balance Sheet Comparison report to isolate the entity with the out of balance issue

    3. This troubleshooting article has more detail but the quick steps are:

      1. Check if the source accounting data balances

      2. Check the correct equity accounts are nominated in Cashflow Settings, Bank & Equity

      3. Try with the original account tree to eliminate issues with your tree.

      4. Use the Discrepancy Analysis report to check the budget balances

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