Accounting providers for multi-entity businesses: 6 options

For a multi-entity business, the accounting provider needs to preserve each entity's records and explain the relationships between them. indinero, Decimal, Graphite, Aprio, RSM, and Institution offer service models to investigate. Confirm the specific entity, intercompany, and reporting work required in each proposal.

Provide an entity chart, ownership details, jurisdictions, ledgers, accounts, and recurring relationships. Explain whether management needs separate statements, a combined operating view, consolidated reporting under an applicable framework, or several outputs. Those requirements should not be treated as synonymous.

Use a payment made by one entity for another or a recurring shared-service charge. Ask how the provider identifies the legal parties, records both sides, obtains approvals, and reconciles the balances. Request support for timing or classification differences.

If management reporting includes eliminations or allocations, ask who approves the policy and maintains the schedule. A combined dashboard that adds balances together does not establish that the underlying entities reconcile or that the required reporting framework has been applied.

Define who can view records, create transactions, approve charges, and release money for each entity. Do not assume a shared finance team should receive identical permissions everywhere. Name the owner of changes to banking, legal details, and reporting structure.

Ask how the provider handles a new entity, an acquisition, or an ownership change. The implementation plan should include opening balances, source documents, approval, and the effect on recurring reporting. Specialist legal, tax, or accounting questions need an appropriate reviewer.

Price the ledgers, accounts, currencies, intercompany relationships, reporting outputs, tax work, and software explicitly. Distinguish recurring accounting from a historical conversion or consolidation project. Check how the fee changes when activity grows in only one subsidiary.

Retain the entity map, intercompany schedules, policies, approved balances, and unresolved items. Choose the proposal that keeps individual records understandable while producing the group view management or external stakeholders actually require.