Consolidating QuickBooks Online companies into one monthly report
Last updated: Oct 6, 2026
The ways to produce one group report from a client’s separate QuickBooks Online companies, and a manual method that keeps each company in its own file.
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Each QuickBooks Online company is its own file, with its own chart of accounts and its own reports. When a client wants one monthly report for the group, the combining happens somewhere else.
This guide lists the usual options and walks through a manual method that leaves every company in its own QuickBooks file.
The options
- Combine in a spreadsheet each month: export each company’s reports, add them up, and remove the balances and transactions between the companies.
- Use a reporting or consolidation tool that reads the files. Several exist; they differ in what they eliminate, and in whether they help correct QuickBooks itself.
- Move the client to a platform built for several entities. That’s a migration, with everything a migration brings.
The manual method
- Choose one period end and one accounting basis, and pull a trial balance (or a Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss) for each company.
- Map every company’s accounts to one group chart, so that “Checking” and “Bank account” land on the same line.
- Put the companies side by side, one column each, then a column for eliminations, then the consolidated total.
- Eliminate what the companies owe each other, and the income one earns from another, such as a management fee. Within the group they net to zero.
- Check the result: the eliminations balance, the consolidated balance sheet balances, and each company’s column matches its own QuickBooks report.
- Keep the workbook, with a note for each elimination.
| Admin Co | Property Co | Eliminations | Consolidated | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Due from Property Co | $50,000.00 | — | ($50,000.00) | — |
| Due to Admin Co | — | $50,000.00 | ($50,000.00) | — |
Make the pairs agree first
An elimination only nets to zero when both sides agree. If Admin Co shows $50,000 due from Property Co and Property Co shows $48,000 due to Admin Co, eliminating either figure leaves $2,000 in the group report that belongs to nobody. Find and correct the difference in QuickBooks before you consolidate.
What this method leaves out
The method suits sibling companies with the same owner, where neither company owns the other. When one company owns another, the group report also needs investment and equity eliminations and, where it applies, non-controlling interests. Profit on goods or assets sold between the companies and foreign currency translation need adjustments of their own. Agree those with the client’s accountant.
Free template: tie out every due to / due from pair in Excel, with a worked example. Get the reconciliation template
Where Flatbooks fits
Flatbooks reads a client’s related QuickBooks Online companies for the month you choose and puts each due to / due from pair side by side, with the difference between the two sides. To help find the entries behind a difference, it can lay the two companies’ ledgers for the period next to each other.
When you’ve found the cause, it prepares one correcting journal entry for the company you choose. The intercompany side is calculated; the other account is yours to pick, with a note of the cause and source. Nothing posts to QuickBooks until you approve it, Flatbooks reads QuickBooks again afterwards to check the result, and a posted correction can be reversed.
Once the pairs agree, it exports the consolidated workbook: the group statements, the eliminations, and a verification sheet tying every company back to its own QuickBooks report. The client’s companies stay in QuickBooks Online. It handles due to / due from balances and management fees between sibling companies; when one company owns another, or other group adjustments are needed, it says so and pauses the export.
The sample is fictional and needs no account. Your first client’s diagnostic is free. No card needed.