About account mapping for consolidations

The chart of accounts may be different in each subsidiary and in the parent company. Matching accounts for consolidation is a relatively straightforward task when the parent company and subsidiaries have similar charts of accounts. Note that some of the accounts may be assigned to a specific branch.

Multiple accounts in a unit can be merged into a single account of the parent company if you set the same external account against different accounts in the consolidation unit in the Chart of accounts (GL202500) window. If the parent company has a more detailed chart of accounts than some of its subsidiaries do, some consolidated accounts may not contain correct information. For example, consider a parent company with several accounts to record travel expenses and a subsidiary with only one account, Travel expenses. In this case, the only travel expense account of the subsidiary has to be consolidated with one of the parent's travel expense accounts. No matter which account is chosen as a consolidation target, the consolidated data will be incorrect.

Note: For correct reporting, we recommend that the subsidiaries keep similar or more detailed charts of accounts than the parent company.

In Visma Net, subaccounts carry additional information about the organisational structure of each company. Subaccounts of the consolidation unit are matched to subaccounts of the parent by mapping the unit's segments to strings of the specified length set in the specified order to form the parent's subaccounts. This makes mapping of subaccounts easier and more flexible.

For each subaccount segment in the consolidation unit, you define the following parameters for consolidation mapping in the Segment keys (CS202000) window:

• Number of characters: The length of the string (segment or part of the segment) in the parent's subaccount to which the segment value is mapped
• Consolidation order: The number that represents the place of this string among other strings in the parent's subaccount

If a segment in a unit's subaccount does not match any string (segment or part of the segment) in the parent subaccount, set both of these parameters to zeros. This means the amounts associated with the segment will be aggregated. During data collection, the subaccounts of the unit are mapped to temporary or raw subaccounts that may differ from the parent's subaccounts by the absence of the consolidation segment.

Consider an example when the parent company has four segments, the first of which is a consolidation segment not involved in mapping. The subaccount of the consolidation unit consists of three segments. Each segment of the unit can be mapped to a same-meaning segment of the parent even though the lengths of the segments are different.

In the Segment keys (CS202000) window, the consolidation mapping parameters for the unit's subaccounts will have the following values.

Segment	Description	Length	Consol. order	Number of characters
1	Project	3	2	2
2	Department	4	4	2
3	Brand	3	3	3

The three-character values of the first segment (Project) of the unit's subaccount will be mapped to the two-character values of the second segment of the parent's subaccount, and other segments will be mapped similarly. Particular strings are specified in the Segment values (CS203000) window in the Mapped values column.

A segment of a unit may be mapped to a string that is shorter than the segment in the parent's subaccount.

Here, in the Segment keys (CS202000) window, the consolidation mapping parameters for the unit's subaccounts will have the following values.

Segment	Description	Length	Consol. order	Number of characters
1	Project	3	2	1
2	Department	4	3	3
3	Brand	3	4	2

One segment in subaccounts of the parent company should be designated for subsidiaries or consolidation units. Such a segment should be specified as a consolidation segment in the Consolidation (GL103000) window in the parent company. The values of this segment are associated with the subsidiaries or consolidation units. As a rule, the consolidation segment is not involved in mapping because the subsidiary does not contain such a segment in its subaccounts. In this case, the segment value can be added to the temporary subaccount during import of the data performed by the parent company (if the Paste segment value check box in this window is checked).