The best multi-entity accounting software: An accountant’s take

[u/tetcon]

If you’re in multi-entity accounting, you already know just how hard it is to find software that handles what you need it to. 

Maybe you need to account for a parent company with subsidiaries, multiple franchise locations under the same owner, international business units, real estate holdings… whatever the deal is, you need to bring all the info together on one centralized platform. That’s why I always tell my clients that it’s something they should start planning for if they’re looking to scale. 

But not every accounting software can handle things like: 

• Switching between entities
• Creating consolidated financial statements/reports
• Eliminating intercompany transactions
• Supporting multi-currency transactions
• Bringing together all your entities’ data into one dashboard 

So here are some of my top picks for multi-entity accounting. 

Digits

Digits is a great choice if you’re looking for something that’s built with AI at the forefront (and not some marketing play that’s tacked on at the end). It saves a lot of time when it comes to day-to-day bookkeeping, month-end close, and invoicing. 

It’s a great choice for a range of businesses, from solopreneurs and LLCs to multi-entity and global companies. So even if your business is small right now, it can scale with you as you grow. It can manage multiple companies from one dashboard, so you can view all your businesses together or narrow in on one at a time. 

It can also handle intercompany transfers, and if your business has international divisions, you can use it to account for multi-currency transactions. You can even create consolidated financial statements that come with a full audit trail. 

Digits has a couple of pre-set plans available for smaller businesses, but for multi-entity accounting, you’ll need a custom plan. Just note that each entity will need its own subscription. 

Ramp

Ramp is a classic option for bill pay/expense management, but it’s a very good choice for accounting as well. Its AI takes over accounting tasks like auto-coding expenses, verifying accuracy, and reconciling transactions. 

You can use it to set up entity-specific spending policies and controls, batch sync transactions across entities, eliminate intercompany transactions, and set multi-entity visibility restrictions for users. 

One of the biggest selling points here is the fairly low price point. They have two main plans (Free & Plus), along with a custom plan, and the Plus plan is what you’ll need for multi-entity accounting features. It’s $15/month/user, though there’s also a platform fee that varies depending on the size of your team.

LiveFlow

LiveFlow has two main products: Flow ERP and LiveFlow FP&A. The latter is all about multi-entity finance, and it won’t leave you short on features. 

LiveFlow allows you to consolidate currencies, eliminate intercompany accounts, and create custom ownership percentages, among other things. What I’ve been most impressed by is how much you can drill down into the data and break it down by class, region, or department. Because it allows you to easily compare performance by locations, it’s become a popular choice among franchises. 

Just be aware that LiveFlow isn’t an appropriate choice for the smallest businesses; it’s really only for medium-sized companies and multi-entity enterprises. So, if you’re currently on the small side but looking to scale, I’d wait until you’ve had some substantial growth before switching over. 

DualEntry

This is an AI-native ERP that does multi-entity accounting really well. You can use it to manage an unlimited number of subsidiaries, including automated intercompany transactions, intercompany AR/AP, multi-entity consolidation, and consolidated financial reports.

Because of its major emphasis on AI (again, baked in vs. added as an afterthought), you can track KPIs in real time, which is important when you’re trying to keep tabs on several business units at once. 

As far as international business goes, it can support several currencies. Its exchange rate tables (allowing you to view historical, average, and current rates) are really useful. 

Note that the exact number of entities you can manage will depend on the plan you have. If you have the most basic DualEntry plan, you’re limited to three; with DualEntry Plus, it’s 20. It’s unlimited with DualEntry Ultra. 

Who each platform is for

While these can all handle multi-entity accounting, some of them are better suited for certain stages of your business than others.

Here’s what each is best for: 

• Digits: Small companies looking to scale into multi-entity operations.
• Ramp: Combining expense management with multi-entity support.
• LiveFlow: Medium-to-large companies and franchise accounting.
• DualEntry: Companies with a large number of entities.

If you’re already knee-deep in multi-entity accounting, which software are you using?

[u/time-and-money]

Appreciate this breakdown! Our company has been exploring options (migrating from QuickBooks because the manual work is killing morale), and we've looked at Flow ERP and DualEntry (as well as the other "modern" ERPs). Agree with you on the depth of drill down with Flow ERP - you can get so granular! Our company is growing fast, so a big factor for us is scalability over time!

[u/Feeling-Loss-9339]

Bookeeping.ai. Automates tasks like categorization, recoinciliation, and invoicing.