Multi-Entity

Note: Multi-Entity functionality is for cloud customers only.

Overview

Multi-Entity refers to a business comprised of multiple business units, such as divisions or subsidiaries, each having their own accounting books. Multi-Entity allows intercompany cross posting and transactions to support sharing resources between business units. For example, one subdivision may have staff with certain skills that are needed to support a project in another subdivision, or a set of legal entities may wish to pool and allocate costs across the legal entity boundaries.

Once you activate Multi-Entity in your instance, you cannot deactivate it.

This functionality is available with the Project Financials family of Unanet licenses.

 

Topics covered on this help page include:

 

Setup

Administrators need to use the following pages to enable and set up multi-entity:

  1. Setup Multi-Entity - to enable and set intercompany labor transfer rate percentage.

  2. Organization >> Financials - to specify the Consolidation Parent  and check box if organization is used to eliminate intercompany transactions between legal entities.

  3. Project Profile

Note: For intercompany balancing projects, be sure to uncheck Allow Time Reporting under the Time tab and Allow Expense Reporting under the Expense tab.

  1. Setup Multi-Entity Associations - to set up the intercompany associations between borrower and lender legal entities, and balancing projects used to derive some transaction attributes.  

  2. Setup Accounts - to set up the accounts used in posting groups.

  3. Setup Posting Options - to set up intercompany labor and expense posting options.

  4. Setup Posting Groups - to set up the intercompany account categories:

  5. Cost Pool Group - to set up a cost pool group with multiple legal entities.

  6. Intercompany Support - to assign loaned resources to the borrowing project. Also can assign intercompany resource assigner and project viewer roles on this page. These assignments display in the Project People Plans List where you can edit other details like labor category and rates.

 

Organizations

The Consolidation Hierarchy supports consolidated reporting on legal entities within a corporate structure. This hierarchy determines which legal entities combine with each other to create consolidated reports such as income statement, balance sheet, and cash flows. You can specify the Consolidation Parent on the Organization >> Financials tab. You can also specify if an organization is used to eliminate intercompany transactions (such as revenue, expenses, due from, due to) between legal entities in a consolidation.

Run the Organization Tree View report to view the consolidation hierarchies.

 

Project Assignments/Plans

To plan or assign borrowed people from outside of your project's legal entity, you must use the Intercompany Support page.

This page allows Intercompany Resource Assigners, Intercompany Project Viewers, or administrators for the lending organization in an intercompany effort to search for the intercompany projects owned by another organization. Intercompany Resource Assigners and administrators can assign colleagues to the effort and also edit plans and assignments. Intercompany Resource Assigners and Intercompany Project Viewers can only view projects to which they have been assigned. Intercompany Project Viewers can only view the plans and assignments and can view project details for certain reports (like ODC Details Report).

You can run certain reports (like Project Cost Summary (JSR)) using the reporting view of "Intercompany Support Provided By Organization" to see loaned resources working on projects outside of the lender's legal entity. You will need Intercompany Project Viewer role in addition to the regular roles to access those reports.

Assignments made from this page will also display on the Project People Assignments List, Project People Assignments - Assign with Grid, and Forecast People Assigner pages.

Plans made from this page will also display on the Project People Plans List, Project People Plans - Plan with Grid, and Forecast People Planner pages.

On the My Projects page, you can also see the intercompany effort projects which are owned by a different organization than the organization to which you belong.

You can import and export the intercompany effort and intercompany support provided by fields.

 

Timesheets

Users can record time (see Working with Timesheets) to projects and tasks outside of their legal entity for intercompany efforts if they are assigned as a loaned intercompany resource on that project (see Intercompany Support assignments page). The intercompany rate will be used for the cost rate and the cost structure defined on the project assignment will be used to record time on the borrower’s legal entity. On the lender’s legal entity, the intercompany rate will be used for intercompany revenue and will use the cost structure defined on the Intercompany Support page. Loaned resources may charge to projects that are outside of their organization if the organizations have an intercompany association (see Setup Multi-Entity Associations) and the user has an intercompany assignment to the project. You can also import and export time for intercompany efforts.

Managers in the project approval group can approve time recorded by the intercompany employees.

 

Expenses

Users can charge expenses to projects and tasks outside of their legal entity if they are assigned as a loaned intercompany resource (see Intercompany Support assignments page). Loaned resources may record expenses against projects and tasks that are outside of their organization if the organizations have an intercompany association defined between them (see Setup Multi-Entity Associations) and the user has an intercompany assignment to the project. You can also import and export expenses for intercompany efforts.

Managers in the project approval group can approve expenses charged by the intercompany employees.

 

Vendor Invoices and Payments

Vendor Invoices and Vendor Payments allow users with appropriate access to select organizations that belong to the legal entity specified in the multi-entity structure defined in Setup Multi-Entity Associations. This allows vendor invoices to support intercompany invoices so that the vendors can be paid and the funds can be allocated across the organizations identified in the intercompany structure. Vendor Payments can reflect intercompany payments.

 

Posting/Unposting

The Intercompany Post process allows you to create intercompany accounting transactions for legal entities lending and borrowing resources with other legal entities. A legal entity can be a borrower of resources onto their projects and a lender of resources to other legal entities as well. Lending companies run this post for intercompany revenue postings and due from's from the borrowing legal entities. Borrowing companies run this post for intercompany cost postings and due to's to the lending legal entity. A company can have both revenue and cost postings in the same post process. Use Intercompany Unpost to undo a previous post for one or many intercompany posts.

Each legal entity in an intercompany relationship will need to run the Intercompany Post to create their respective General Ledger entries. You cannot select multiple legal entities and create entries on their individual books simultaneously.

The lending organization will create their labor cost post for the actual cost of the borrowed resource's work via the Labor Cost Post and create expense cost post for the actual cost of the borrowed resource's expense via the Expense Report Cost Post.

Borrowing organization administrators run the Billing and Revenue Post. This posting process uses the intercompany cost rates and amounts for labor and expense transactions for cost plus and fixed price percent complete calculated on a cost basis.

 

Reports

Following is a list of reports that include intercompany data: