How to consolidate multiple MYOB company files

MYOB is built around a company file. Each entity you look after is its own file - MYOB Business or AccountRight - with its own chart of accounts, its own opening balances and its own reports. That is the right shape for a single trading entity, and the wrong one the moment a client is a group: a holding company over two trading companies, a property entity beside them, a family trust above the lot. The group's accounts are not in any one file, and MYOB has no feature that pulls them into one.

This guide covers how to produce group financial statements from several MYOB company files without rebuilding a spreadsheet every reporting cycle.

What MYOB tells you to do

MYOB's own guidance on consolidating reports across company files points at a master file: export the accounts and journals out of each company file, import them into one "Master" file created for the purpose, and print the balance sheet and P&L from that. MYOB is candid that there is no one-size-fits-all version of it - how it goes depends on how many files you have, how many accounts are in each, how they land after the import, and which AccountRight version you are on.

It works, and it has three costs. The master file is a copy, so it is stale the moment any entity posts another transaction, and re-importing is the only way to refresh it. Accounts that are named differently across files arrive as separate accounts, so the mapping is redone by hand each time. And there is nowhere for an elimination to live except as a journal typed into the master file, which means the intercompany entries are re-keyed every period and reviewed against last period's paper rather than against anything the file can show you.

The spreadsheet method (and what it costs)

The other usual approach is to export a trial balance from each company file, paste them into adjacent columns in Excel, line the accounts up by hand, add columns for the intercompany eliminations, and total across. It does work. What it costs is a rebuild every period, a silent break every time somebody adds an account in one file and not the others, and a review that means re-checking arithmetic rather than reading accounts. On a four-entity group it is usually the slowest part of the job, and the part most likely to carry last year's mistake forward.

What has to happen to consolidate properly

Whatever tool you use, consolidation is the same four things. Worth naming them, because a spreadsheet hides which one went wrong.

• One chart, not four. Each file names its accounts its own way. "Sales", "Sales - trading", "Income - services" may be one group line. Until the accounts are mapped, the totals mean nothing.
• Consistent periods. Every entity has to be brought to the same balance date, on the same basis, or the group balance sheet will not balance for reasons nobody can find later.
• Intercompany eliminations. A loan from the holding company to a subsidiary is an asset in one file and a liability in another. Left in, the group's balance sheet counts money the group does not have. The same goes for intercompany sales, which otherwise inflate group revenue.
• A statement set, not a number. The output is a P&L, a balance sheet and a trial balance that agree with each other, with comparatives, in a form you can hand to a client.

The automated method with Report Craft

1. Connect each MYOB company file through MYOB's official connection. Report Craft reads the chart of accounts and the period balances it needs. Your MYOB password is never shared, and nothing is ever written back to the file.
2. Map to a group chart of accounts. Allocate each file's accounts to consistent group lines once. Different names across files still roll up to the right place, and the mapping is remembered.
3. Post the eliminations. Add elimination entries for intercompany loans, sales and investments. They are held in Report Craft, so the company file your client works in every day is untouched.
4. Generate the group statements. A consolidated Profit & Loss, balance sheet and trial balance, with comparatives, bundled into one print-ready PDF alongside the front cover, compilation report and notes.

Because the mapping and the eliminations are saved, the next run is a re-sync and a regenerate. The structural work is done once, not every period.

Groups that are not all on MYOB

Few groups are tidy. An entity bought three years ago is on one package, the one set up last year is on another, and nobody is going to migrate either just to produce group accounts. MYOB company files can sit in the same consolidation as Xero organisations and QuickBooks Online companies, normalised so the consolidated statements read identically whatever each entity happens to run.

The Australian financial year

Report Craft is built in Australia for Australian firms, so a July-June year is the default rather than a setting, and the comparative is last financial year without being asked for. Appropriation statements and trust resolutions are part of the same bundle, which matters when the group has a trust at the top of it.

See the MYOB consolidated reporting overview, the detail on intercompany eliminations, or how the same job looks when the group is spread across QuickBooks and Xero.