Capabilities · 03 of 04

Every entity you add costs you days at close.

Growth across borders is supposed to be the good problem. Then the second entity arrives, and the third, and the close that used to take five days takes twelve because the consolidation lives in a spreadsheet and one person understands it.

We rebuild how cross-border finance functions are designed, so entities stop adding days.

Book a 20-minute review How an engagement works

The problem

Adding people does not fix it

TechFarben supports multi-entity finance by standardising the group chart, close calendar, intercompany rules, currency treatment and reporting definitions. New entities then extend a repeatable model.

The median month-end close takes 6.4 business days. The top quartile does it in 4.8.

APQC benchmark data. Groups consolidating thirty or more entities manually routinely exceed fifteen.

The reason a multi-entity close slips is structural, not effort-related. Each additional entity multiplies the eliminations required, and every subsidiary sitting on a different system, chart of accounts or functional currency adds a translation step that a person has to perform and another person has to check.

Intercompany reconciliation alone consumes one to three days of close labour in groups whose subsidiaries run on different systems. Currency translation adds more. By the time eliminations produce a difference someone has to chase, the close has already lost its first week.

The symptoms are recognisable. The close consistently slipping past business day eight, where adding headcount has not helped. Translation and cumulative translation adjustment work taking days each month. Eliminations producing differences nobody can explain quickly. Audit findings on rate documentation. And each acquisition making it measurably worse.

If every acquisition adds days to your close, the problem is the design, not the team.

What we do

Four ways in

Finance Function Readiness Review

Where the finance function stands against where the business is going.

Three to four weeks, fixed fee, one board-ready deliverable.

We map the current architecture; entities, systems, currencies, data flows, and the manual steps holding it together. We measure what the close actually costs in days and in people. We identify the risks that will surface at audit, at acquisition, or at diligence.

Then we give you a sequenced roadmap: what to fix first, what it costs, and what each stage buys you. Fundable in stages, so nothing depends on approving all of it.

Most clients commission this because something specific has forced the question; an acquisition, a new market, an auditor's comment, or a finance director who has resigned. The review is useful in all four cases, and the roadmap outlives the trigger.

What you get

Current-state architecture. Risk register. Run-cost baseline for the finance function as it stands. A staged roadmap with sequencing and dependencies. Written for a board, not an IT department.

Market Entry & Entity Stand-Up

A new subsidiary operational in weeks, inside the group you already run.

New territory means a new legal entity, a local currency, local tax treatment, statutory reporting nobody in head office has read, intercompany stock or service flows, and a consolidation path back to the parent.

Done properly, that's configuration. Done badly, it is a project, and the business waits.

We stand up the entity inside your existing group structure: functional and reporting currency, chart of accounts aligned to the group chart rather than invented locally, tax and statutory compliance for the jurisdiction, intercompany transactions handled as sales and purchases with elimination configured from day one, and your existing approval and fulfilment workflows extended to the new entity rather than rebuilt for it.

Where a jurisdiction has no standard localisation path, we build it. We have done this for Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Dubai and Labuan, none of which come out of the box in any mid-market system.

Recent workPetCubes: new market entities stood up inside the existing Singapore group instance, with local tax treatment, chart of accounts aligned to the global chart, intercompany inventory handled as sales and purchases, and elimination rolling up to the Singapore parent.

Buy-and-Build: Entities Without Close Days

Acquire more without closing slower.

For serial acquirers, the finance function is where the strategy either compounds or stalls. Every bolt-on brings its own chart of accounts, its own currency, its own systems and its own way of recognising revenue.

Absorbed one at a time without a standard, the group ends up with a close that grows linearly with the acquisition count.

We design the target-state group structure first; one chart, one close calendar, one set of intercompany rules, one reporting definition, and then bring entities onto it. The tenth acquisition should cost less to integrate than the second.

That includes the work most acquirers postpone: intercompany elimination automated rather than performed, currency translation handled at source, and reporting defined once at group level so subsidiaries stop producing their own versions of the truth.

Recent workCharles Monat Associates: ten entities across seven jurisdictions in four functional currencies, consolidating into a single close. Close time cut from a fortnight to four days, with intercompany elimination automated.

Group Close, Reporting & Forecast

One close. Then the reporting the board actually reads.

Getting to a single consolidated close is the first half. The second half is what comes out of it.

Most mid-market groups can eventually produce a consolidated P&L. Far fewer can produce it quickly enough to act on, or slice it by entity, product, channel and period without someone rebuilding it in a spreadsheet.

Fewer still can put a rolling forecast next to it, or explain a variance without a week of investigation.

We build the close first; calendar, controls, reconciliations, elimination, and then the reporting layer on top: consolidated and entity-level P&L, cash position, rolling forecast, realised and unrealised currency movement, and the variance analysis that makes a board pack useful rather than historical.

Where the reporting question spans revenue and finance data, which it usually does; we join them, because the questions a board asks rarely respect the boundary between the CRM and the ledger.

Recent workCharles Monat Associates: a data lake joining finance and CRM data into certified reporting datasets with row-level security; executive sales performance, pipeline health, P&L bridge, producer scorecard, and a board view slicing across subsidiaries, people and periods.

How we engage

Three stages. You can stop after any of them.

01 · Diagnose

Fixed fee, three to four weeks. Architecture, close cost, risk, staged roadmap.

02 · Build

Scoped programme, billed on milestones. Entity by entity, or process by process.

03 · Run

Monthly retainer. The structure stays current as the group changes.

This is the capability most likely to start with the Readiness Review, because the answer is rarely the one the client expected when they called.

Proof

What this looks like in practice

Two weeks to four days

Charles Monat Associates: ten entities, seven jurisdictions and four currencies consolidated into a single four-day close.

Two companies, one finance function

Summer Discovery: US and UK operations brought onto one group structure following acquisition.

New markets inside the group model

PetCubes: new entities stood up inside the existing group instance with local treatment and group elimination designed in.

See documented client work →

Questions

Our subsidiaries are on different systems. Does everything have to move to one?

No. Consolidating onto a single system is often the right answer, but not always, and it is rarely the right first step. Standardising the chart, the calendar and the elimination rules delivers most of the benefit at a fraction of the disruption.

How long does it take to add a new entity?

Weeks rather than months, once the group structure is designed properly. The first one takes longest because it establishes the pattern.

we are closing in twelve days. Is that unusual?

it is common in multi-entity groups and it is not inevitable. The benchmark median is around six days; the top quartile is under five. The gap is almost always structural.

Do you work in jurisdictions without standard localisation?

Yes. Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Dubai and Labuan have all needed bespoke treatment on our engagements.

we are acquiring. When should we involve you?

Before completion if possible. The cost of integrating a target rises sharply once it has been running inside the group on its own terms for a quarter.

Can you work alongside our existing advisors?

Yes, and often do. We currently operate alongside a strategy firm on one engagement, where they hold the growth plan and we build what it depends on.

Start with a conversation, not a proposal

Twenty minutes. Tell us how long your close takes and where it goes wrong, and we will tell you whether it is structural.

Book a 20-minute review