Six Situations, In the Order We Built For Them

“We are not switching accounting systems, but ours cannot produce what the bank asks for.”

The system is fine at what it does. It is everything after the trial balance that is assembled by hand: the monthly pack, the covenant certificate, the answer to the auditor, the folder a buyer wants by Friday. Keeping the system and adding this on top means the books stay where money moves from, the reporting, analytics and evidence run here, and every package says which figures came from where. Nothing has to change for the people who key the transactions.

• You can keep your current accounting system as the system of record. Switch that on for a company and Automate Accounting imports, reports, closes and packages on top of it, and declines to move money in a book it does not own, so a bill is never paid twice.

• One generation produces three ready-to-send packages, for management, your bank and your investors, each holding only what that audience should see.

• Any accounting system that can export a trial balance, a ledger, or open invoices and bills can feed it. Imports are checked before anything is written, previewed as a difference, and can be rolled back.

How the layer works →

“Consolidation is a spreadsheet, and the eliminations column is a plug.”

Several companies, several sets of books, and a group statement assembled by pasting trial balances into tabs. The intercompany column is the part that breaks: two entities record the same transaction from opposite sides, the records disagree, and the elimination is whatever makes it balance. Consolidating from the real ledgers means a correction in one entity moves the group number, and a disagreement between two sides is something you see rather than something you plug.

• Multi-entity consolidation rolls up each company's real books, with intercompany eliminations and access controlled company by company.

• Intercompany balances are eliminated on both sides and reconciled between them, so a disagreement between two entities' records surfaces instead of netting itself away.

• Partial ownership, acquisitions mid-year and disposals are modelled with effective dates, so a group that changed shape during the year still consolidates correctly.

The multi-entity case →

“Our revenue schedule is a workbook and our board asks about RPO.”

Annual invoices, monthly revenue, mid-term upgrades, and a schedule that lives outside the ledger because the system models the invoice rather than the obligation. Modelling contracts as performance obligations puts recognition back in the books, makes a mid-term modification something with an effective date rather than an edited row, and turns remaining performance obligations into a number you derive instead of assemble.

• Revenue recognition runs on contracts and performance obligations in the system, not on a spreadsheet somebody maintains beside it.

• A mid-term change to a contract is handled as a modification with its own effective date, not by editing the original and hoping the prior period still ties.

• Remaining performance obligations are disclosed from the contracts themselves, so the number an investor asks for is derived rather than assembled.

How revenue recognition works →

“We need real controls, and we are not doing a nine-month ERP project.”

The tool did not fail; you passed the size it was built for. What you need next is approval thresholds that mean something, a close whose state is derived rather than asserted, and reporting a board or a bank will accept. What you were quoted for it was an implementation, a consultant, and most of a year before anyone closes a month in it.

• Close readiness is read from the books themselves, so a step cannot be ticked off while the work behind it is still undone: unposted entries, unreconciled accounts, subledgers that don't tie.

• Two layers of permissions: a firm-level role, plus a per-company set that governs what each person can see and approve.

• The four GAAP statements — including changes in equity — generate from the ledger with prior-period comparatives.

What moving actually involves →

“Every reporting pack is a scramble, and I am never quite sure what we sent last time.”

Covenant certificates, borrowing base calculations, monthly packs on somebody else’s calendar. The work is bad enough; the part that keeps people up is not being able to reproduce what was sent three months ago. Issuing a pack puts it on a register with a unique seal, reissuing supersedes rather than overwrites, and the whole diligence bundle is one action rather than a fortnight.

• Every pack you issue is recorded with a unique seal, so you can say exactly what you sent, when, and prove it has not changed since.

• Every night, every pack you have delivered is re-checked against the books. If the numbers underneath it have moved, that pack is flagged and you are told, before your lender notices.

• A complete due-diligence package, with statements, ledgers, agings and evidence, produced as a snapshot of one moment in time and carrying a seal anyone can check.

Stakeholder reporting →

“Our margin is a guess until someone counts the warehouse.”

Costing that has to survive receipts, landed costs, purchase price variance and a physical count — and a cost of goods figure the ledger and the warehouse agree on. Inventory movements post through the same single door as everything else, so the balance sheet number and the count are reconciled rather than reconciled-to.

• Every figure on every statement opens into the journal entries behind it, and from there into the invoice, bill or payment that caused them.

• Every balance-sheet account is substantiated against its supporting detail, with the difference and its age carried on the reconciliation rather than left for someone to notice.

How the close ties out →