Multi-Company & Consolidation

If you run more than one entity — a parent and subsidiaries, a holding company with operating companies, multiple LLCs under one umbrella — Solid Accounting treats each as its own .solid file with its own books, chart of accounts, and audit trail. That's the right separation: the entities are legally separate, their books should be too.

Consolidation is the layer on top: rolling multiple files into one combined view for management reporting, lender packages, or internal scorecards. This page covers both.

Multiple companies, separate files

Each entity gets its own .solid file. They can:

• Have different fiscal years
• Use different base currencies
• Have entirely different charts of accounts
• Be at different software versions
• Be administered by different accountants

Switching between companies in Solid is a File → Open Recent operation. The app remembers the last several files you've opened; switching between them is one click.

For accountants managing many client files, the Accountant tier ships with a Client Switcher — a panel showing every client file with its current period status, last sync, and outstanding tasks. Click to open. The list is local to the accountant's machine; nothing about it is shared with the clients.

Why not "one file with multiple companies"

Some products do it that way (QuickBooks Desktop's "Multi-Company" used to). The trade-off:

The separate-files model is the right answer for legal, security, and audit reasons. The cost is the operational lift of switching files, which the Client Switcher mostly addresses.

Consolidation groups

A consolidation group is a named bundle of two or more company files that you want to roll up together. Setting one up:

1. Lists → Consolidation → New Group
2. Pick member files — .solid files for each entity to include
3. Map accounts — define which accounts in each member roll into which line on the consolidated report
4. Optionally define eliminations — intercompany transactions that cancel between the entities

Solid stores the group in the file you create it from (typically the parent or holding company's file). The group references members by file path; if member files move, the references update automatically as long as Solid can find them on the new path.

Account mappings

Different companies often have different chart-of-accounts structures. Subsidiary A might use Sales Revenue and Service Revenue as separate accounts; subsidiary B might lump everything into Revenue. Consolidation needs to roll them up coherently.

The mapping step assigns every account in every member to a line on the consolidated chart of accounts. The consolidated chart can be one of the member's COAs, a synthetic chart you define for reporting, or a hybrid.

Example mapping for a parent + two subs:

The mapping is per-group. The same member file can be in multiple groups with different mappings (e.g. one group for management reporting, another for lender package).

Intercompany eliminations

When subsidiaries trade with each other, the consolidated picture should net these transactions out — they're internal to the parent group, not third-party transactions.

Example: Parent invoices Sub A for management fees of $50,000. From Parent's books, that's $50K of revenue. From Sub A's books, that's $50K of expense. From the consolidated parent's perspective, no money left the group — it's just been moved between members. Consolidation eliminates the $50K of revenue against the $50K of expense.

Solid stores eliminations as journal entries within the consolidation group:

Elimination — management fees Parent → Sub A
DR  Sub A's Management Fee Expense       50,000
CR  Parent's Management Fee Revenue      50,000

The elimination posts only to the consolidated report — it doesn't touch either member's actual books. Each company keeps showing its own transactions in its own GL; the consolidated view nets them.

Common elimination types:

• Intercompany sales — revenue/expense pairs as above
• Intercompany loans — receivable in one entity / payable in the other; eliminate both
• Investment in subsidiary — Parent's "Investment in Sub A" asset eliminates against Sub A's equity (the parent's portion)
• Dividends paid by sub to parent — eliminate the parent's dividend income against the sub's dividend declaration

Consolidated reports

After setup, run consolidated versions of:

• Consolidated Income Statement — combined revenue/expense across all members, eliminations applied
• Consolidated Balance Sheet — combined assets/liabilities/equity, with intercompany balances eliminated
• Consolidated Cash Flow — combined; intercompany cash transfers eliminated
• Consolidated Trial Balance — useful for audit walkthroughs

The reports show member-by-member columns plus a total. Drilling into any number opens the member's GL detail in the underlying member's file (Solid switches to that file in a new tab).

Reports honor the as-of date — if your members are at different period close states, the consolidated report tells you which periods are closed in which member.

Currency handling

Consolidating across currencies adds complexity. The consolidation currency is set on the group. Member files in foreign currencies translate to the consolidation currency at:

• Average rate for income statement items (revenue, expenses)
• Closing rate for balance sheet items (assets, liabilities)
• Historical rate for equity items

Solid pulls historical rates from the rates store; the difference between methods accumulates in a Cumulative Translation Adjustment equity account on the consolidated balance sheet (per ASC 830 / IAS 21).

If your members are all in the same currency, this is a non-issue and the consolidated report doesn't show CTA.

Performance considerations

Consolidation reads from member files at report time — there's no pre-aggregated cache. For a group with five members and a year of activity each, a consolidated income statement runs in a few seconds. Larger groups (10+ members, multi-year) take longer.

If consolidation reports are slow:

• Run them at month-end, not real-time
• Use the Consolidation Snapshot feature (in development) which materializes the consolidated state at a point in time
• Consider whether you actually need member-level detail in the report or just member totals — the latter is much faster

Common gotchas

Member file path moved, group can't find it. Edit the group, point at the new path. Solid stores file paths in the group; renames or moves break the reference until updated.

Account mapping dropped a member's account. Common when a member adds a new account after the mapping was defined. Edit the mapping to include the new account. Solid surfaces unmapped accounts when the consolidated report runs — they appear as a Mapping incomplete warning.

Intercompany balance doesn't fully eliminate. Usually because the elimination amount is wrong (the recording dates differ between entities, so the balances captured by the consolidation period don't exactly match). Check both entities' transaction logs for the period; an unrecorded intercompany transaction is the most common culprit.

Currency translation produces a big CTA balance unexpectedly. Verify the historical rates Solid is using for each period. If they're stale (last updated months ago), refresh from the rates source.

Consolidated report shows different numbers than expected. Check the as-of date and the period filter — and remember that closing entries in member files affect the consolidated picture. A member that hasn't closed its prior fiscal year shows that year's net income in the income statement instead of having moved it to retained earnings.

Performance: consolidated reports are slow for a 10+ member group. Materialize via the snapshot feature when available. Until then, run consolidated reports off-hours or against month-end periods rather than real-time.

Cross-references

• General Ledger module — the per-member GL that consolidation reads
• Reports module — the underlying reports that consolidate
• Accountant Copy module — handing a single member's file to an external accountant for adjustments