How is this different from QuickBooks or Xero consolidation?

Xero has no native consolidation and QuickBooks limits it to its top enterprise tier, and neither handles non-controlling interest, current-rate FX translation with a cumulative translation adjustment, goodwill on acquisition, or unrealised profit elimination on intra-group inventory sales — the parts that make consolidation actually match the standard. HelloBooks does all of it automatically, on every plan that includes the Owner Suite.

Does owning less than 100% of a subsidiary reduce its numbers in the group?

No — and that is the point. Under IFRS 10 / ASC 810 a partly-owned subsidiary is consolidated in full (100% of every line). The outside owners’ share is attributed to a non-controlling interest: net profit and total equity are unchanged, they simply split between the parent’s owners and the NCI. HelloBooks does that split for you from the ownership percentage you set per member.

How are foreign-currency subsidiaries translated?

Using the current-rate method (IAS 21 / ASC 830): assets and liabilities at the closing rate, equity at its historical rate, and the income statement at the period-average rate. The residual FX difference is posted to a Cumulative Translation Adjustment within equity, so the consolidated Balance Sheet balances. It is opt-in per group; leave it on the simple single-rate basis and reports are unchanged.

Where does goodwill come from?

From the acquisition. When you record how a member was acquired — which company holds the investment, on which account, and the fair value of the net assets acquired — HelloBooks eliminates the investment against the pre-acquisition equity and recognises the excess as goodwill (IFRS 3 / ASC 805). It derives the figure from your ledger, so the sheet stays balanced even if the investment was later impaired; a bargain purchase shows as negative goodwill rather than being hidden.

Do the intercompany eliminations hide anything?

No. Eliminations apply to the consolidated roll-up while the account lines are shown gross, and any unmatched difference between the two sides of an intercompany balance is surfaced as an explicit line on the report — never quietly absorbed to force a balance. You can review every elimination and exclude specific company pairs.

What about profit on sales between group companies that haven’t sold through yet?

Declare the unrealised margin still sitting in a member’s closing inventory and HelloBooks eliminates it (IFRS 10 / IAS 27): consolidated profit is reduced by the amount not yet earned outside the group, and a contra-asset provision reduces inventory and equity on the Balance Sheet by the same figure, so it stays balanced. It releases automatically the following period as that stock sells through, and splits with the non-controlling interest when the selling company isn’t wholly owned.

Can I consolidate a subsidiary that isn’t on HelloBooks yet?

Yes. Add it as a manual entity and enter its P&L and Balance Sheet from a spreadsheet; it consolidates alongside your live HelloBooks companies. It is the bridge for a group mid-migration, or for an associate you only report at period-end.

Multi-Entity Consolidation

Group accounts that consolidate themselves — to the standard, every close

Point HelloBooks at your member companies and it produces one consolidated P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow across currencies. Intercompany balances net out, partly-owned subsidiaries split correctly between you and the minority, foreign entities translate at the right rates, and goodwill falls out of each acquisition — the accounting-grade work QuickBooks and Xero make you do in a spreadsheet.

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Consolidation, not a spreadsheet export

Most "consolidation" in small-business software is a folder of separate company files and a manual spreadsheet that stitches them together at year-end. It breaks the first time an intercompany invoice, a minority shareholder, or a foreign subsidiary enters the picture — which is to say, immediately for any real group.

HelloBooks consolidates the way an audit expects. Each member company keeps its own books; the group layer reads them live, converts to your presentation currency, removes the transactions companies did with each other, attributes the outside owners their share, and produces eight consolidated statements you can drill from the group total all the way down to a single member’s journal line.

HelloBooks.ai — How Group Consolidation WorksEach company keeps its own books — the group layer reads them live.

Intercompany balances that eliminate themselves

When Company A sells to Company B inside the group, the group as a whole hasn’t sold anything — so that revenue and the matching receivable/payable have to come out, or the group overstates both its income and its assets. HelloBooks detects those intercompany pairs and eliminates them automatically on the consolidated P&L and Balance Sheet.

Nothing is hidden to make it balance. If the two sides of an intercompany balance disagree — a timing difference, an unconfirmed invoice — the residual is surfaced as an explicit line on the report, not quietly absorbed. You review every elimination and can exclude any company pair you want handled manually.

Automatic detection of intercompany receivables/payables and revenue/purchases
Elimination applied to the consolidated roll-up, with the account lines shown gross for audit
Unmatched differences surfaced on the report, never swallowed
Owner-reviewable: exclude specific company pairs, toggle per group

Non-controlling interest, done right (IFRS 10 / ASC 810)

Own 80% of a subsidiary? It is still consolidated in full — every line, at 100% — and the 20% that belongs to outside owners is attributed to a non-controlling interest, not netted out of your numbers. Getting this wrong is the single most common consolidation error, and it is the one spreadsheets get wrong most often.

HelloBooks holds the ownership percentage per member and does the attribution for you. On the P&L, net profit is unchanged and splits below the line into the share attributable to owners and the share attributable to the non-controlling interest. On the Balance Sheet, total equity is unchanged and reclassifies into owners’ equity and NCI — so the sheet still balances, by construction.

Foreign subsidiaries at the right rates — with the CTA (IAS 21 / ASC 830)

A subsidiary that keeps its books in euros can’t simply be added to a dollar group at one rate. Under the current-rate method, assets and liabilities translate at the closing rate, equity at its historical rate, and the income statement at the period-average rate — and the difference between them is a real number that has to go somewhere.

HelloBooks translates each member correctly and posts that difference to a Cumulative Translation Adjustment inside equity, exactly where the standard puts it — so your consolidated Balance Sheet balances and your foreign subsidiaries stop distorting the group. Turn it on per group; leave it off and every report is unchanged.

Goodwill on acquisition, off the ledger (IFRS 3 / ASC 805)

Buy a company and your books carry an "investment in subsidiary" asset. Consolidate naively and you count that value twice — once as the investment, once as the subsidiary’s own net assets. Real consolidation eliminates the investment against what you actually bought, and the premium you paid over the fair value of its net assets is goodwill.

HelloBooks works goodwill out from the amount your ledger genuinely carries — not a figure typed into a spreadsheet — so the consolidated Balance Sheet stays balanced even when the investment has been impaired or revalued. A bargain purchase shows as negative goodwill, plainly, instead of being quietly clamped to zero. Enter three details per acquisition and the group does the rest.

Unrealised profit on intra-group sales, eliminated (IFRS 10 / IAS 27)

Company A sells inventory to Company B at a markup. Until Company B sells that stock on to someone outside the group, the group hasn’t actually earned that margin — it’s still sitting in the group’s own warehouse, just wearing a different price tag. Add the two companies together naively and you recognise profit the group hasn’t made yet, and carry inventory on the consolidated Balance Sheet at more than it cost the group.

HelloBooks eliminates it: declare the unrealised margin still sitting in a member’s closing stock, and the consolidated P&L strikes the profit that hasn’t been realised outside the group, while a contra-asset provision reduces inventory and equity by the same figure on the Balance Sheet — so it stays balanced. It releases automatically the following period as that stock sells through, and when the selling company is only partly owned, the non-controlling interest shares the adjustment in the same proportion it shares everything else.

Declare the unrealised margin still sitting in a member’s closing stock (and what releases from last period’s opening balance)
Consolidated profit reduced by the net new margin; prior-period margin releases back in as that stock sells through
A contra-asset provision reduces inventory and equity by the same figure on the Balance Sheet, so it stays balanced
Shared with the non-controlling interest when the selling company is only partly owned — never absorbed by the parent alone

Eight consolidated statements, drillable to the journal

Consolidated P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Trial Balance, Budget-vs-Actual, and AR/AP ageing — all at the group level, all in your presentation currency, all refreshed live from the member books rather than a stale year-end snapshot.

Click any consolidated line to see which companies contributed and how much, then keep drilling to the underlying journal entry in the member company. Per-account FX rate overrides, manual (spreadsheet-backed) entities for a subsidiary that isn’t on HelloBooks yet, and per-user access control so a group owner can share the consolidated view without exposing every member’s ledger.

Consolidated P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Trial Balance, Budget-vs-Actual, AR & AP ageing
Any presentation currency, translated live from each member’s base currency
Drill from group total → contributing company → member journal entry
Manual entities for subsidiaries not yet on HelloBooks (spreadsheet-backed)
Per-user access: share the group view without exposing every member’s books

How teams use HelloBooks

What HelloBooks does for businesses like yours

“AI categorizes every transaction automatically and learns from your corrections, so a small team keeps clean books without spending evenings on manual data entry.”

Small business · US

“For a practice managing dozens of client books, automated reconciliation turns a full day of matching into a background task — review the AI matches, approve, and move on.”

Accounting practice · US

“Snap a receipt on your phone and the AI reads, categorizes, and files it — bookkeeping stays current even for people who would rather not think about numbers.”

Freelancer · mobile-first

Illustrative scenarios describing what the product does for each business type — not attributed customer reviews.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from QuickBooks or Xero consolidation?: Xero has no native consolidation and QuickBooks limits it to its top enterprise tier, and neither handles non-controlling interest, current-rate FX translation with a cumulative translation adjustment, goodwill on acquisition, or unrealised profit elimination on intra-group inventory sales — the parts that make consolidation actually match the standard. HelloBooks does all of it automatically, on every plan that includes the Owner Suite.
Does owning less than 100% of a subsidiary reduce its numbers in the group?: No — and that is the point. Under IFRS 10 / ASC 810 a partly-owned subsidiary is consolidated in full (100% of every line). The outside owners’ share is attributed to a non-controlling interest: net profit and total equity are unchanged, they simply split between the parent’s owners and the NCI. HelloBooks does that split for you from the ownership percentage you set per member.
How are foreign-currency subsidiaries translated?: Using the current-rate method (IAS 21 / ASC 830): assets and liabilities at the closing rate, equity at its historical rate, and the income statement at the period-average rate. The residual FX difference is posted to a Cumulative Translation Adjustment within equity, so the consolidated Balance Sheet balances. It is opt-in per group; leave it on the simple single-rate basis and reports are unchanged.
Where does goodwill come from?: From the acquisition. When you record how a member was acquired — which company holds the investment, on which account, and the fair value of the net assets acquired — HelloBooks eliminates the investment against the pre-acquisition equity and recognises the excess as goodwill (IFRS 3 / ASC 805). It derives the figure from your ledger, so the sheet stays balanced even if the investment was later impaired; a bargain purchase shows as negative goodwill rather than being hidden.
Do the intercompany eliminations hide anything?: No. Eliminations apply to the consolidated roll-up while the account lines are shown gross, and any unmatched difference between the two sides of an intercompany balance is surfaced as an explicit line on the report — never quietly absorbed to force a balance. You can review every elimination and exclude specific company pairs.
What about profit on sales between group companies that haven’t sold through yet?: Declare the unrealised margin still sitting in a member’s closing inventory and HelloBooks eliminates it (IFRS 10 / IAS 27): consolidated profit is reduced by the amount not yet earned outside the group, and a contra-asset provision reduces inventory and equity on the Balance Sheet by the same figure, so it stays balanced. It releases automatically the following period as that stock sells through, and splits with the non-controlling interest when the selling company isn’t wholly owned.
Can I consolidate a subsidiary that isn’t on HelloBooks yet?: Yes. Add it as a manual entity and enter its P&L and Balance Sheet from a spreadsheet; it consolidates alongside your live HelloBooks companies. It is the bridge for a group mid-migration, or for an associate you only report at period-end.