Available in Sage 50 Premium Accounting and higher.

Consolidate Companies: A Pre-Consolidation Checklist

The New Company Setup process allows you to combine the charts of accounts of a number of existing Sage 50 companies to create a new consolidated chart of accounts. This results in a consolidated company embodying one or more subsidiary companies. Tell me about the company consolidation process.

In order for subsidiary companies to be consolidated, they must be compatible in certain ways with the parent company that will include them and with the other subsidiary companies that will make up the consolidation. Before you consolidate, you should be sure that all of the subcompanies you want to include in your consolidation meet these conditions:

• The companies you choose as subcompanies must all have been created in the same release of Sage 50—for example, Sage 50 2013.
• The subcompanies you choose must all use the same accounting method (that is, cash or accrual).
• For all subcompanies you choose, each general ledger account of the same type must share the exact same account ID (for example, Account 10001, Petty Cash).
• The subcompanies you choose must all share the same fiscal-year structure. That is, their fiscal years must all be based on the standard calendar year OR on exactly the same custom fiscal-year structure (for instance, thirteen periods with the fiscal year starting in July).
• All subcompanies you choose must use the exact same account number for their Equity-Retained Earnings account.
• If the account segment structure for the consolidated companies is the same, the structure will be copied automatically to the master company when it is created. However, if the structure is not the same, Sage 50 will leave the segment fields blank in the master company and notify you as such when you create the master company.

Also, before you begin consolidating, you should note any subsidiary companies you want to add that require user passwords and IDs for access to financial statements. During consolidation, you will be asked to enter those passwords and IDs, so have them handy beforehand.

If you make sure that your desired subsidiary companies meet these conditions, the company consolidation process should go smoothly.

A Company Reconsolidation Checklist

Reconsolidating a company involves changing the roster of subsidiary companies that make up the consolidation, either by removing or adding companies. Since in this case the consolidated company already exists, you must be sure that all subcompanies meet certain conditions of the consolidated company you want to add them to. These conditions are pretty much the same discussed in the bullet points above. That is, all subcompanies you want to add must match the existing consolidated company in the following ways:

• have been created in the same release of Sage 50
• use the same accounting method
• have general ledger accounts of the same type with exactly matching account IDs
• share the same fiscal-year structure
• have the exact same account number for the Equity-Retained Earnings account

As with company consolidation, during the reconsolidation process you will be asked to enter user passwords and IDs for all subsidiary companies that require them for financial statement access.