Multi-Entity Consolidation in the world of Family Office accounting is one of the most crucial components of reporting…period. Ironically, it is also one of the biggest pain points Family Offices experience in their accounting processes. Calling it a jigsaw puzzle is being kind, and yet it does not need to be a puzzle at all.
Today’s Family Office can involve dozens of separate legal entities. These entities can have varying levels of ownership spread amongst individual (or groups of) family members, trusts, LLC’s, etc. Family Offices that use Quickbooks or legacy systems (and so many do) are at a disadvantage from the start. These systems are simply not designed to seamlessly deal with the current environment. Exporting to Excel, verifying the exported data back to the source system, linked worksheets and spreadsheet files, multiple versions of the same file floating around the office. Calling it a puzzle may indeed be an understatement because these situations are part and parcel of real life in many Family Offices. Consolidations take days to complete.
Imagine if you will…a shared dimensional chart of accounts, real time continuous multi-entity consolidation, dashboard analytics. These things are not wish list items, they are in use today at a growing number of Family Offices! Visionary organizations in the Family Office and Wealth Management eco-system have discovered that Sage Intacct is financial software built for the Single and Multi Family Office.
One of the key benefits that automatically accrue from this functionality is the re-purposing of staff. Having executives, and staff alike, spend time on value added tasks as opposed to time consuming repetitive ones. Is it not better to spend time reviewing and analyzing the financial statements rather than creating them in Excel? The prerequisite of any accounting system should be to eliminate mundane and repetitive tasks. It must give the users the freedom to move the organization ahead through a better use of their skill set and time.
I invite you to read further on how Sage Intacct can create a sea change in your Family Office.
