Online financial consolidations

This article describes online financial consolidations in General ledger. Before you read this article, be sure to read the Financial consolidations and currency translation overview article.

After you've completed your setup, you enter the details of the consolidation on the Consolidate [Online] page. When you've finished, you can click OK or Batch to process the consolidation.

Criteria

On the Criteria tab of the Consolidate [Online] page, you define the accounts, the periods, and the type of data that is being consolidated.

Here is an explanation of the various fields on this tab:

• Description – Enter a precise description for the period that you're consolidating.

• Main account – Use the fields in this section to define the main accounts that will be processed.

  • From and To – Specify a range of accounts to process. If you leave these fields blank, all accounts from all companies will be moved to the consolidation company. Therefore, if you're consolidating four companies, and each company has a different chart of accounts, all accounts from all four companies will be created in the consolidation company.
  • Use consolidation account – If you set this option to Yes, the Select consolidation account from field becomes available. In this field, select whether all accounts should be consolidated to the consolidation account that is set on the Main accounts page, or whether you want to select the account from one of the consolidation account groups.
  • Consolidation account group – Select the group to use for the main account mapping for the consolidation.

• Consolidation period – Use the fields in this section to define the consolidation period.

  • From and To – Specify a range of dates for the consolidation. If you leave these fields blank, the consolidation will be processed for all periods that are defined in the ledger calendar for the company. We don't recommend that you leave these fields blank.

  • Select consolidation amount from – Use this field to specify whether the accounting currency amounts or the reporting currency amounts from the source companies will be used to update the accounting currency amounts of the consolidation company.

    • Select Accounting currency to use the accounting currency amounts from the source companies to update the accounting currency amounts in the consolidation company. When this value is selected, use the Consolidate accounting currency field to define how the accounting currencies in the consolidation company will be calculated.

    • Select Reporting currency to use the reporting currency amounts from the source companies to calculate the accounting currency amounts in the consolidation company.

      • If the reporting currency from the source company is the same as the accounting currency of the consolidation company, the reporting currency amounts are copied from the source company to the consolidation company.
      • If the reporting currency from the source company differs from the accounting currency of the consolidation company, the values are translated by using the exchange information that's defined on the Currency translation tab of this page to calculate the consolidation company values.

  • Consolidate accounting currency – This field is available only if the Select consolidation amount from field is set to Accounting currency. Use it to specify whether the accounting currency amounts from the source companies are translated through exchange rates or copied to the consolidation company. Select Use currency translation to use the exchange rate information that's defined on the Currency translation tab to calculate the consolidation accounting balances. Select Use accounting currency amount to copy the accounting currency amounts from the source companies to the consolidation company.

    • If the accounting currency from the source company is the same as the accounting currency of the consolidation company, the currency amounts are copied from the source company to the consolidation company.
    • If the accounting currency from the source company differs from the accounting currency of the consolidation company, the values are translated by using the exchange information that's defined on the Currency translation tab to calculate the consolidation company values.

  • Include actual amounts – Set this option to Yes to consolidate your actual data.

  • Include budget amounts – Set this option to Yes to consolidate data from the budget register.

  • Rebuild balances during consolidation – We don't recommend that you set this option to Yes. Instead, rebuild balances as a separate batch job.

• Budget models – If you've selected to consolidate budget data, use the fields in this section to define the budget models.

  • From and To – Specify the range of models to use.
  • Budget rate type – Select the type of budget rate to use for currency translation of budget data.

Financial dimensions

On the Financial dimensions tab, you define the dimensions that should be included in the consolidation company. To select a dimension, set the Specification field to Dimension, and then define the order of the dimension in the consolidation company.

Regardless of the order that you define, Main account will always be the first segment.

Legal entities

On the Legal entities tab, you define the companies that should be included in the consolidation company. You also define the ownership percentage of those companies. If you specify less than 100-percent ownership, the specified percentage will be rolled up to the consolidation company. For any translation differences, the Account type for conversion differences field is used to select the main account from the setup on the Accounts for automatic transactions page.

Elimination

On the Elimination tab, you have three options for processing eliminations:

• Select the elimination rule, and then, in the Proposal options field, select Proposal only. This option will process the elimination during the consolidation process, but it won't post everything in one step. You can post the journal later.
• Select the elimination rule, and then, in the Proposal options field, select Post only. This option will process the elimination during the consolidation process and will post everything in one step.
• Run an elimination proposal separately from the consolidation process by using the elimination journal.

For more information about eliminations, see Elimination rules.

Currency translation

On the Currency translation tab, you define the legal entity, account and exchange rate type, and rate. If the consolidation company is mapped to different main accounts than the source company, the consolidation company’s main account must be entered in the From date and To date fields, not the source company’s main accounts. For each row of legal entity and main accounts, three options are available in the Apply exchange rate from field:

• Consolidation date – The date that's defined in the Consolidation period To field on the Criteria tab for the consolidation will be used to get the exchange rate. This rate is equivalent to the spot or month-end rate. You will see a preview of the rate, but you can't edit it.
• Transaction date – The date of each transaction will be used to select an exchange rate. This option is most often used for fixed assets and is often referred to as a historical rate. You can't see a preview of the rate, because there will be many rates for the various transactions in the account range.
• User defined rate – After you select this option, you can enter the exchange rate that you want. This option can be useful for average exchange rates or if you're consolidating against a fixed exchange rate.

Additional resources

For more information about consolidation and currency translations, see the parent article of this article, Financial consolidations and currency translation overview.

For information about scenarios where you might generate consolidate financial statements, see Generate consolidated financial statements.