I would like to suggest an improvement to the Group Accounting feature of ERPNext for consolidation of Financial Statements of multiple companies. That is, if someone else has not already proposed this.
Currently in ERPNext, the parent company and the subsidiaries have the same chart of accounts with accounts having the same account number and account name. In practice this is not always the case. A Holding Company can invest in different subsidiary companies. This means the parent company will have a chart of accounts that is materially different from that of the subsidiaries, or the subsidiaries will have differing charts of accounts.
I am proposing an “Account Mapping System” such that ERPNext will allow the chart of accounts in the subsidiary to be mapped to a particular GL account in the parent company.
Each legal entity has its own/different bank and bank account. We only mapped the accounts to a particular account in the Parent company. If the Consolidated Financial Statements are spooled in the Parent Company, we only have one line for 1201 BANK BALANCES .
This way, ERPNext allows setup of different chart of accounts for the companies in the group without having to force a single chart of accounts with same account numbers and account names on all companies.
GL accounts can be created in the chart of accounts of a child company (subsidiary) rather than in the parent (group) company. In this way, the group company only gets updated as accounts are added in the child companies.
Example:
“1401 - GTBank” added in Subsidiary A.
“1501 - Access Bank” added in Subsidiary B.
- Group company should be updated with both accounts.
The current ERPNext structure is not suitable. We have clients who have business entities operating in different industries, each with its own chart of accounts. One of these industries requires the adoption of a government-approved chart of accounts.
Group consolidation would result in the parent company’s chart of accounts becoming excessively long, scattered, and difficult to read.
