By role
For the group controller
The arithmetic isn't the hard part. The inputs arrive late, in different shapes, from people who don't work for you, against a date that doesn't move.
| Company four | Closes late, every quarter |
|---|---|
| Company seven | Opened three ledgers in March |
| Day nine | A corrected trial balance arrives |
| The date | Does not move |
Each company stays on its own system. You map once, see what’s stale, and every figure shows its working.
The month, as it actually goes
Company four closes late every quarter. Company seven opened three new ledgers in March and told nobody. Two companies book the same intercompany transaction in different months, and finding it takes an afternoon. Then a corrected trial balance arrives on day nine and everything built on the old one is quietly wrong.
That’s logistics, and it eats the time you need for judgement.
What helps
- Read the books where they are. A read-only connection pulls the trial balance and ledgers. Nothing is exported, re-keyed or posted back.
- Map once. Which ledger goes on which line is a decision, so it’s recorded. A new, unmapped ledger is flagged on the page instead of dropping out of a total.
- See what’s stale. When a correction arrives, every step that depended on the old figure is marked to run again.
- Show the working. Every figure traces to its entry, and a check that couldn’t run says so instead of showing a tick.
Where to start
With your own trial balance: have it read, read-only, before anything is signed.
What FINAHQ does, in full · what IT will ask · what it costs and what moves it
Reading for someone else? Try the CFO or the FP&A lead.
Questions
Commonly asked
Do we have to change our ERPs?
No. Each company keeps whatever it runs on. The connection is read-only, and a group on four different systems is the normal case.
Who does the mapping?
The first mapping is done with you, because it encodes decisions only your team can make. After that it runs, and a new ledger is flagged, never silently dropped.
What happens when a subsidiary sends a corrected trial balance?
The period reopens for that company, and everything built on it is marked stale. You can always see what's out of date, which a spreadsheet can't show you.