How a BI platform provider consolidated their multi-company accounting with Odoo

The challenge – scattered multi-entity accounting processes hinder consolidation & financial overview

Our customer chose Odoo as a tool to help them tackle a complex intercompany accounting infrastructure. They were struggling with decentralized systems within their multi-company environment and critically lacked visibility across organizational branches. Leveraging Odoo’s own capacities to consolidate multiple entities, our customer aimed to unify their subsidiaries and simplify cumbersome tasks from transactions to invoicing.

To achieve their objectives, our customer faced challenges that required a quick resolution:

• Complex & Intransparent Cross-Subsidiary Sales: Our customer’s sales processes were stunted as a result of their complex intercompany operations. Their sales quote data was unsustainably managed as it was unautomated and cumbersome. Furthermore, the  process lacked  visibility and communication across subsidiaries, from inconsistent product naming and subsequent post-sales invoice reconciliation. Ultimately, each subsidiary’s independent and disconnected functioning complicated processes from initial sales to invoicing.
• Inefficient Event Ticket Invoicing: Our customer lacked  integration of their existing event management and ticketing data systems. Thus, their accounting processes were affected, as invoicing information was scattered across different softwares and company entities. 
• Lack of Financial Overview & Immense Manual Overhead in Accounting: Our customer struggled with managing their accounting processes across multiple branches. Not only were they relying on different accounting systems, they were also enlisting both internal and external accounting resources to execute the same processes – all factors based on their subsidiary locations. They were in crucial need to increase their overview across entities to then be able to centralize their resources and efficiently automate manual databases and workflows.

The solution – automating  multi-company accounting & sales with Odoo 

Our customer made the most of Odoo to combat their operational challenges. Their goal was to automize accounting processes while remaining compliant with each of their multiple subsidiary’s country legislations. Furthermore, they aimed to effectively handle intra-company transaction processes to unify their sales and accounting. With these objectives in mind, our customer ultimately strived to both simplify and sustainably manage their multi-subsidiary infrastructure under one roof.

1. Implementation of Odoo Enterprise apps

We leveraged Odoo 14’s suite of applications such as Sales and Accounting & Invoicing as a baseline for our customer to successfully implement their project: 

• Sales & Invoicing Automation: To ensure a seamless transition between sales and invoicing, we enabled real-time sales data synchronization with our customer’s Odoo environment. This would not only facilitate quick quotation data access and approval workflows but also ensure that these processes would be both visible and functional across subsidiaries.
• Intercompany Accounting Consolidation: Leveraging Odoo’s consolidation capabilities, we empowered our customer to let go of overly manual databases used to manage their accounting processes. We helped them centralize accounting systems that were different based on location exclusively into Odoo. Additionally, we provided them with a simplified consolidation structure to create comprehensive auditor reports. This would not only increase our customer’s intra-company transparency but would also allow them to let go of external resources and manage their accounting in-house.
• Multi-Entity Transaction Optimization: We helped our customer in streamlining their transaction management processes in-system and via banking integrations. This allowed for better control and visibility over multinational clients’ payment and transaction statuses across our own customer’s multiple subsidiaries.

2. Seamless Odoo integrations with 3rd-party systems

Considering our customer’s complex landscape, we seamlessly integrated their existing third-party systems with Odoo:

The result – fully consolidated accounting & overview across international entities

Our customer reaped clear benefits by integrating Odoo into their daily operations:

• Optimized Sales Processes: Our customer was able to streamline their expense management processes by combining Odoo own features with third-party integrations. They achieved this by centralizing their transaction systems in a single environment that supported their complex intercompany structure, thus acquiring visibility over their cross-subsidiary financial movements.
• Simplified Invoicing Across Entities: Our customer managed to simplify their invoicing process across integrated platforms and unify them within Odoo. This resulted in smoother operations and enhanced accuracy in their financial transactions and subsequent invoice management. Now given visibility and elevated functionality across their existing entities, our customer was easily able to issue an invoice from their headquarters even if the respective transaction took place with another subsidiary.
• Automated Intercompany Accounting: Our customer now benefited from overview over their entire company and synced processes as a result of increased cross-subsidiary transparency. By automating their accounting processes using Odoo’s intercompany conciliation, our customer was able to achieve smoother processes from accounting book closure to audit reporting. Increased visibility combined with simplified processes allowed our customer to establish sustainable accounting processes across entities and fully centralize their resources in-house.