We spun up 2 subsidiaries last year. Each has own Beancount ledger, own bank accounts, own reporting. Now parent company needs consolidated P&L. How do I combine 3 separate ledgers into one “group” financial statement?
Do I merge all transactions into one master ledger? Keep separate and consolidate at reporting time? And how do I handle intercompany transactions (subsidiary A paid subsidiary B $50K for services—in consolidated view, this should net to zero)?
Separate ledgers or master with entity tags? Which approach did you choose and why?
I managed 4 subsidiary ledgers for a holding company. We kept separate Beancount repos, then consolidated manually using Excel (pull P&L from each, eliminate intercompany, roll up). Painful but defensible for audit.
Key lesson: intercompany eliminations are huge. $200K transfer from sub A to sub B looked like revenue in consolidated view until I caught it.
Better approach: tag all intercompany transactions with “intercompany:true,” then filter at reporting time.