Murgese Consolidate Pilot

Group accounts, from each company’s trial balance

A separate product. It takes a trial balance from every company in a group and produces the consolidated accounts under FRS 102. It keeps no ledger of its own, so a firm that does not use Murgese can still use it.

Join the pilotThe six parts

  1. Each company’s trial balanceFrom whatever system it keeps its books in, read and shown to you before it is kept.
  2. Mapped once to the group chartEvery account to a line of the group’s own chart, with how that was decided.
  3. Between companies, taken outWhat the companies owe and sold each other, and the investment against what it bought, as journals that add to nil.
  4. The consolidated accountsUnder FRS 102, from the front cover to the cash flow statement, with every figure traced to the company account behind it.

What it is

A consolidation engine, not a group edition

Murgese Consolidate reads the trial balance of each company in a group, maps every line to a group chart, and prepares the consolidated accounts from what it finds. The companies can be on any bookkeeping system, or on several, because a trial balance is all it asks for.

It is not a bigger Murgese and it is not a feature inside it. The two products are bought separately and updated separately, and neither needs the other.

The group chart belongs to the firm rather than to the software. Bring your own codes, import them, or copy a chart from a group you have already set up.

Six of its screens

From the trial balances to what prints

The Trial balances screen in Murgese Consolidate: a file is read first and shown before it is kept, with one line for each company and date, including a company's trial balance at its acquisition date.
The Trial balances screen in Murgese Consolidate: a file is read first and shown before it is kept, with one line for each company and date, including a company's trial balance at its acquisition date. Demo data: the group and the figures are invented.
The mapping screen: each company account with its balance, the group line it lands on, and how that was decided, such as "As last period".
The mapping screen: each company account with its balance, the group line it lands on, and how that was decided, such as "As last period". Demo data: the group and the figures are invented.
Eliminations in Murgese Consolidate: amounts owed between two group companies, and goods sold between three of them, each taken out as a journal that adds to nil.
Eliminations in Murgese Consolidate: amounts owed between two group companies, and goods sold between three of them, each taken out as a journal that adds to nil. Demo data: the group and the figures are invented.
The investment in three subsidiaries eliminated against their share capital and reserves at acquisition, leaving goodwill of £960,000, as a journal that adds to nil.
The investment in three subsidiaries eliminated against their share capital and reserves at acquisition, leaving goodwill of £960,000, as a journal that adds to nil. Demo data: the group and the figures are invented.
The consolidation schedule in Murgese Consolidate: each group account with each company's figure, the adjustments on consolidation and the aggregated total, with labels showing what eliminates later.
The consolidation schedule in Murgese Consolidate: each group account with each company's figure, the adjustments on consolidation and the aggregated total, with labels showing what eliminates later. Demo data: the group and the figures are invented.
What prints: the sections of the group accounts in the order they print, each with a tick and what it is, from the front cover to the consolidated cash flow statement.
What prints: the sections of the group accounts in the order they print, each with a tick and what it is, from the front cover to the consolidated cash flow statement. Demo data: the group and the figures are invented.

What comes out

A full set, and the arithmetic behind it

  • The four statementsBalance sheet, profit and loss account, statement of changes in equity and statement of cash flows, with the notes, and filleted accounts under section 444 where those are what gets filed.
  • Eliminations, proposedIntercompany balances are matched from the mapping rather than by name, including one account against several. What it proposes is shown before it is applied.
  • Goodwill and minoritiesGoodwill computed at the control date and amortised under Section 19, with non-controlling interests carried through the balance sheet, the profit and loss account and the equity statement.
  • Companies bought and sold mid-yearAn acquisition or a disposal is split at the control date, so pre-acquisition results stay out and what arrived with the company is separated from what the group earned.
  • Foreign subsidiariesTranslated, with each cash flow taken at the rate at its own date under Section 7.12 rather than the balance sheets being subtracted, which is the difference that puts pure rate movement in reserves if it is got wrong.
  • A year end that is not the group’sHandled on the interim route, with what happened in the gap asked for and recorded rather than estimated from a run rate.
  • AssociatesCarried by the equity method, with the share of the result and the distributions received both landing where Section 14 puts them.
  • Intra-group stockThe provision against unrealised profit is charged as the movement on it, not in full every year, which is the error that leaves both balance sheets right and the profit wrong.

In detail

Six pages, one part each

Checking

The two statements that cannot hide arithmetic

A consolidation that balances is not a consolidation that is right. A balance sheet balances whether or not the minority took its share, whether or not the exchange difference went where it belongs, and whether or not the stock provision was charged once or twice.

So the statement of cash flows and the statement of changes in equity are each derived twice: once from the movements of the period, and once from the balances at each end of it. The two have to agree, and the arithmetic between them has nowhere to go. Four further self-checks run over the finished set, and a problem report collects everything the run wanted to tell you.

Where a statement cannot be produced, it says so and asks for the case rather than printing a figure it cannot stand behind.

Refusals

What it will not do, and says so on the screen

Each of these is a point where the software could produce a number and has been stopped from doing it. They are named where they bite, not buried in a note.

  • Split a pooled intercompany accountIt would be the first fuzzy match this product made, and it stays refused.
  • Decide what happened in the gapBetween a subsidiary’s own year end and the group’s is a judgement about three months of trading. It is asked for. “Nothing significant” is an answer and is recorded as one.
  • Work out how much intra-group stock is leftAsked for, because a figure from a margin and a run rate is an estimate presented as a fact.
  • Place a fair value adjustment it cannot identifyRefused rather than put on the nearest line.
  • Guess at a written-down investmentA parent writing down what it paid for shares and a group impairing a fixed asset have opposite treatments on consolidation, and nothing in a trial balance distinguishes them. It blocks until it is told which it is.
  • Identify the acquirer in a reverse acquisitionOr where a new entity has been formed to effect the combination. That is a different product and this one does not pretend otherwise.

Where it stands

Not on general sale

Consolidate is finished enough to run a group from end to end and it is not on sale. It has been through an outside quality run and the work that run left open is being done: backup and restore shown working through the operator’s own routine, an upgrade on a copy of a real installation, and the whole benchmark group checked figure by figure through to the final accounts.

It prepares the accounts. It does not file them. Which taxonomy the output is tagged against, and whether that output is a tagged file handed to whatever files it or a filing route of its own, are decisions that have not been made, and this page will say so until they are.

The way in is the pilot programme, which is open. It is free for the whole pilot, then a pilot tester’s price, set out in writing before the pilot ends and held for two years from the day the licence starts. If the pilot is not for you, tell us about your groups and we will come back to you when it is on sale.

Tell us what your groups look like

How many companies, whether any of them are abroad, whether the year ends line up, and what you consolidate with today. That is enough for an honest answer about whether this suits the work.

Join the pilot Tell us about your groups