Accounting is especially challenging for family offices with portfolios across multiple industries; multi-entity complexity makes consolidation and reporting harder. It can be difficult to structure your operation to effectively streamline financials and easily track and reconcile all of your information. If financials aren’t landing where they should and entering data for each company is taking days to complete, it may be time to rethink your accounting software.
If you’re moving from QuickBooks or aiming to streamline business financials, these practical tips will help optimize your family office’s accounting operations.
Create an efficient accounting operation by first pinpointing gaps in your current processes, then defining a clear target state and timeline. A checklist helps clarify the objectives for a revamped accounting practice. Strive for the following when optimizing your family office accounting operations:
Complete transparency
Financials that are easy to use
Multi-entity and intercompany capabilities
Dashboards with real-time insights
Consolidated financials for all your businesses in one database
A complete transaction audit trail
A cost-effective system that allows you to easily scale up or down
Transforming your operation usually begins by choosing accounting software that centralizes financial data, supports automation of routine tasks, and scales with your business.
Choose cloud accounting designed for fast implementation, an intuitive interface, and accurate, real-time visibility across your full financial picture. Multi-entity capabilities are critical for family businesses with multiple legal entities—inefficiencies here can significantly slow overall accounting processes.
Many small businesses outgrow entry-level tools like QuickBooks because, while QuickBooks can record intercompany entries, the manual, multi-database workflow is inefficient and doesn't scale for multi-entity accounting.
Consider a mid-market accounting solution that bridges entry-level tools and costly enterprise systems to improve family office financial controls. Gravity Software (Gravity), a cloud-based accounting solution built on the Microsoft Power Platform, is one such option. Once implemented, Gravity provides secure, web-based access to real-time information for each company and location, enabling accounting teams to work efficiently in the office or remotely. This is useful for owners, leadership, boards, accountants, and advisers to make more informed decisions.
Improve your accounting practice by systematically refining core accounting processes to make workflows more consistent and efficient. A solution like Gravity expands on capabilities provided by basic systems by offering a single database to house financial data across multiple legal entities. This eliminates the tedious task of logging into multiple databases and speeds up routine activities.
Other efficiency gains include the following:
Better financial reporting: Robust reporting tools let you compare entities and analyze trends within or across companies. Customizable reports help you discover insights and improve your bottom line.
Real-time analytics: Integrated analytics (e.g., Microsoft Power BI) enable the quick development of meaningful dashboards to prevent small issues from becoming major problems.
Better data security: Set up security access for staff based on companies or locations, down to the field-attribute level. Varying degrees of security and accessibility let team members view only the information they need, protecting sensitive family financial data while enabling better-informed decisions.
Your family business represents both livelihood and legacy. To protect what you’ve built, you need complete control over your financial data. Accounting software like Gravity can help by optimizing multi-entity accounting processes, improving reporting and analytics, and enhancing data security and access. These improvements can save time and money and help ensure the family business continues for generations.
Optimize your accounting operations with Gravity’s cloud-based accounting software to streamline multi-entity reporting and automate key workflows. Contact Gravity to learn more and schedule an online demo today.
Gravity Software
Better. Smarter. Accounting.