To consolidate multiple companies with a single set of books, first complete your eliminating entries, and then create reports on the consolidated parent.

Creating Automatic Eliminating Entries
To complete your eliminating entries for multiple companies using a single set of books, you can use the following General Ledger features:

• Automatic Eliminating Entries
• Recurring Journals
•  

Automatic Eliminating Entries
With the Automatic Intercompany Eliminations program you can eliminate intercompany balances and transactions that are based on mapping rules you have defined in the Elimination Sets window.

If you maintain multiple companies within one set of books, you can define automatic entries to eliminate intercompany receivables and payables, investments in subsidiaries, intercompany sales, and so on.
Note: The Automatic Intercompany Eliminations program eliminates standard balances, not average balances.

To expedite consolidations and enhance consolidation reporting, define a separate company for your eliminating entries. Post eliminating entries to this elimination company so you do not have to reverse them later. You can also prepare financial statements to clearly identify consolidating and eliminating amounts to ease reconciliation of your consolidated balances.
Note: If you define a separate company for your eliminating entries, be sure to include it as a child of your consolidated
company.

Recurring Journals
You can also create Recurring Journal formulas or MassAllocations to create elimination entries. These formulas can be simple or complex. Each formula uses fixed amounts and/or balances that include:

• Standard, end–of–day, or average balances
• Actual or budget amounts
• Statistics and period–to–date or year–to–date balances from the current period, prior period, or same period last year
• You can quickly create new recurring formulas by copying and modifying existing formulas.
•  

This method is most beneficial for elimination entries that require complex formulas, such as eliminating minority interest or eliminating costs of goods sold. Calculate the amounts for your eliminating entries by using the accounts in your consolidating companies as formula factors. For example, define amounts for a journal entry line affecting your investment in subsidiary account by summing your subsidiary equity accounts in your formula calculations.
Note: You must use this method to eliminate average balances.

Creating Consolidated Reports
If you maintain multiple companies within one set of books, you can use the Financial Statement Generator (FSG) or the report definition tool in the Applications Desktop Integrator (ADI) to create and generate consolidated financial statements using the consolidated parent accounts.

Financial Statement Generator
You can use FSG to create a consolidating report — a side–by–side listing of all your consolidating companies. You may find this useful when reconciling your subsidiaries’ totals to the consolidated total. For example. a consolidating report might show your report line items down the left side and present each subsidiary and your consolidated totals in separate columns. This example is shown in the following table:

To create a consolidating trial balance report with the Financial Statement Generator:
1. Define your balance sheet row set. Include rows for your intercompany receivables and payables, your investments in
subsidiaries, and your intercompany amounts.
2. Create a column set that has separate columns for each company. If you enter your eliminating entries in a separate company, also define a column for that company.
3. Define a total consolidated column by adding all the columns for each of your companies, including the eliminating company.
4. Edit the column headings to show the names of each company.
5. Run the consolidating report with the consolidating row and column sets. Note that to get a consolidating income statement report, you can simply define a consolidating income statement row set and run it with the same consolidating column set.

Applications Desktop Integrator
You can extend consolidation reporting to the spreadsheet environment using Applications Desktop Integrator (ADI). With ADI you can create standard reports in a spreadsheet and publish them in HTML format to the Internet or your corporate intranet, distributing consolidation information throughout the organization at once. Authorized users can enter a password to log on to a secure web site or download a spreadsheet version of the report to perform additional analysis.