Another company joins the group. Perhaps you’ve made an acquisition, opened overseas or set up a separate business for a new venture. There’s another set of accounts to bring into month-end, another chart of accounts to understand and possibly another currency to convert. The spreadsheet that worked perfectly well for two companies suddenly needs a lot more attention.
It’s easy to wonder whether you’ve outgrown your accounting software. But before you start looking for a replacement, take a closer look at where the work is getting difficult.
Where is the problem?
Your accounting software handles the records for each business: invoices, bills, bank transactions and the books your local teams and accountants work with. Group reporting asks different questions. How is the whole business performing? Which company is driving growth? What does cash look like across the group? And how much of that revenue comes from trading between your own companies?
Those questions become harder to answer as the group grows, even when each company’s accounting system is doing its job.
If your team spends days exporting trial balances, matching account codes, converting currencies and assembling management reports, start by examining that process. The systems holding the records might still meet your needs, while combining their data has become a bigger job.
What changes when you add more entities?
Bringing company results together means accounting for differences in how costs are recorded, how entities trade with each other and which currencies they use.
One company might record software subscriptions separately while another includes them under IT costs, so account mapping helps bring the figures into a consistent group view, provided the underlying detail is there. And sales between your own companies need eliminating to avoid overstating group revenue and expenses.
Exchange rate movements can also make it harder to tell whether performance has actually improved. Your reports need to help you investigate those differences without rebuilding the spreadsheet every month.
Bringing the reporting together in Joiin
Joiin brings data from Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage and other platforms into one group view, while your teams carry on using their existing accounting systems. You can map accounts, manage intercompany eliminations and report across currencies without pulling everything together in a spreadsheet.
If group revenue is up but profit has fallen, comparing companies helps you see where costs have outpaced sales and where to investigate. And with dashboards, budgets and forecasting and Report Packs, you can use those figures to track performance, plan ahead and prepare reports for the board.
And if you use AI tools such as Claude or ChatGPT, Joiin’s MCP connection lets you work with your Joiin data there too, giving you another way to explore your group’s results without moving the underlying accounts.
When does a new accounting system make sense?
A new accounting system makes sense if you need stronger purchasing controls, more sophisticated inventory management or a different way to run accounting across the business. But adding more entities doesn’t automatically mean you’ve reached that point.
Before looking at replacements, follow the work behind a report that regularly holds up month-end. If the time goes on collecting data, checking adjustments and assembling reports, improving that process could solve the problem. And if your team is also struggling to record transactions or manage approvals, those are reasons to review the accounting systems themselves.
If reporting is where you need a hand, try Joiin free for 14 days with your own company data.
