Multi-Company Financial Reporting Is Now in switchbooks

Business owners rarely organize their companies around the limitations of accounting software. One owner may operate several locations as separate LLCs. A holding company may oversee multiple operating businesses. An accounting firm may need to review a group of related clients together.

The books should remain separate. The financial picture should not.

That is why we built multi-company financial reporting into switchbooks.

What the new reporting workflow does

If you have access to more than one company, you can select the companies you want and open a combined:

• Profit & Loss statement
• Balance Sheet
• Cash Flow statement
• Financial Snapshot
• Forecast

You can view the group-wide total or compare company columns side by side. From supported totals in the P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow, you can open the underlying transactions in a consolidated transaction viewer.

You can also save a recurring company selection as a reporting group. If you review the same five locations every month, you do not need to rebuild that selection each time.

The interactive workflow is available on our multi-company financial reporting page.

What stays separate

Combined reporting does not merge the companies' books.

Each company keeps its own:

• Chart of accounts
• Bank and credit-card connections
• Transactions and journal entries
• Team access
• Reports

The reporting layer brings selected results together when you need a group view. That separation matters because the source records still belong to the individual legal or operating company.

If you are preparing the reports for the first time, our guide to combining financial reports without spreadsheets explains the preparation and review process.

Combined reporting versus statutory consolidation

The word consolidation can describe more than one type of work.

Management reporting often means adding the financial results of related companies so an owner can understand revenue, expenses, cash, assets, and liabilities across the group.

Statutory or GAAP consolidation can require additional work, including:

• Intercompany eliminations
• Currency translation
• Ownership and noncontrolling-interest adjustments
• Acquisition accounting
• Formal consolidation entries

switchbooks currently provides combined multi-company management reporting. It does not automatically create intercompany eliminations, translate foreign currencies, or prepare statutory consolidation adjustments.

That boundary is important. A combined report is useful for management, but it should not be presented as a formal consolidated financial statement when those adjustments are required. Read our plain-English guide to intercompany eliminations if you are unsure where that line applies.

Why we built it

The usual multi-company workflow starts in accounting software and ends in a spreadsheet:

1. Export every company's report.
2. Copy each report into a workbook.
3. Align account rows.
4. Repair formulas.
5. Repeat the process next month.

The spreadsheet is not the insight. It is assembly work standing between the books and the insight.

switchbooks keeps that recurring management view closer to the source records. A user can choose the reporting scope, see the total, compare the companies, and inspect supporting activity without exporting and reconstructing the same workbook.

How to review a combined P&L

A group total becomes more useful when it can still be explained.

The combined P&L shows the overall revenue, expenses, and net income for the selected companies. Company columns show where those numbers came from. Transaction drilldown helps explain a specific report amount.

Our detailed guide to building and reviewing a consolidated P&L covers period alignment, category consistency, company comparisons, and intercompany review.

Who this is for

Multi-company reporting is especially useful for:

• Owners with several operating LLCs
• Multi-location businesses
• Holding-company structures
• Accountants working with related entities
• Fractional CFOs preparing recurring management reports

It is included with switchbooks rather than sold as a separate reporting add-on. Each company has its own $25/month subscription, and the multi-company reporting workflow is available when a user has access to the companies being reported.

You can explore the full switchbooks feature set, review pricing, or try the interactive reporting demo on the consolidation page.