Consolidated Financials

The Problem

Client overview

Cochner Garvey Capital Partners, Inc. (CGCPI) is a Wichita-based private equity firm with an investment history of over 50 years, focusing its investment on middle market companies. CGCPI holds nine separate entities, each with its own QuickBooks company file.

QuickBooks limitations

CGCPI moved to QuickBooks Enterprise from Sage and FRX Reports and discovered a showstopper limitation. It is impossible to get consolidated reports from more than two company files. Nor can QuickBooks be customized to provide financials for a partial owner entity. CGCPI’s situation was even more complex because the account groupings needed to display in a different order and with different labels than in their chart of accounts.

With QuickBooks alone, the only way to consolidate financial reports for multiple company files is to export each P & L and Balance Sheet to a spreadsheet, manually cobble together the pieces and create conditional calculations. This would have to be done every month, a massive waste of time, with a process rife with the potential for error – and fraud.

Solution

Single-click reporting

QQube for QuickBooks handles the issue of consolidation very simply: all QuickBooks company files loaded into the QQube data warehouse are available for reporting.
Once CGCPI provided their report layout sample, along with the custom account groupings, Datisfy used Crystal Reports to build the formulas and structure that result in an accurate, single-click consolidated income statement and balance sheet – including budgets. With the QQube Multiple Company Add-On, any number of company files can be accommodated.

Since going live, when CGCPI invests in new entities, only minor edits were required to include these new entities in the reports. This solution saves the team at CGCPI at least two days of effort every month, and enhances the reputation of the Director of Financial Reporting when she delivers the financials with such velocity, reliability and accuracy, month after month.

Testimonial

The Datisfy team was very successful in building the custom reports that we now use to consolidate several wholly-owned subsidiaries, one controlling interest, and a joint-venture with their respective parent companies. They were a very quick study once we finalized our requirements.
The reports are now in production and working as expected. Datisfy’s team members were always patient, very professional, and quite pleasant to work with. I highly recommend Datisfy and their solution.

Cindy Ascanio
 Director of Financial Reporting
 CGCPI