Having several group companies set up in a single Sun Accounts Business unit can be the starting point for driving efficiencies. Using Sun Accounts, “Business Unit” is the term for a separate database of reference and transactional data.

Initially, when companies with individual finance departments join together in a Group, setting up a single SunAccounts Business Unit is likely to be the most effective strategy. This is especially the case where there are common suppliers.

There are many benefits to this approach.

The most obvious one arises where several of the group companies share suppliers. When a supplier makes an enquiry, the purchase ledger team can go the supplier’s account and see all transactions across the group, rather than having to change to different legal entities to see other transactions. Payments to the suppliers can be carried out separately by each group company or optionally from a single group bank account.

As there is only one business unit, there is a single period end for all the companies represented in the ledger. SunAccounts is a single ledger system containing all sales, purchase, cash and other transactions.

As there is only one business unit, there is only one chart of accounts, so no coordination of changes is required, nor conflicts in code usage can arise.

Each legal entity is represented by one of the analysis codes attached to every transaction. Balancing by the entity code is enforced. Reporting on a single entity is straightforward, as it is across several entities simultaneously.

This approach facilitates the centralising of finance departments, although remote access over the web from other locations or even on the move is a standard aspect of SunAccounts.

When the time comes to rationalise the legal entities in the group, the changes in processing are few, minimising disruption.

I have considerable experience of helping groups to drive cost savings by setting up SunAccounts in this efficient way.