Hello all, I recently started at a small REIG (just under $2B AUM) that has over 50 income generating properties, operational companies, and stakes in startups/small businesses. Previously, I worked in Big 4. Many of the properties roll up into different funds, which are owned by co-investors, trusts, and other businesses. What this means is that the company has books for all of the entities, funds, trusts, co-investors, and more. For most of the entities, they recently moved from some dated accounting software to Quickbooks (Auditors nightmare, trust me). The incoming generating properties were moved to Yardi. With that said, each individual property in Yardi also has a related set of books in Quickbooks, which is updated as cash is distributed to investors/large loans are received, etc. In sum, we're looking at >200 sets of books here across 2 ERP systems. So how do these guys reconcile/do investor reporting? Our Director of Finance has a password protected "master" excel workbook which only HE can access, and it consists of over 500 tabs! How is the data in these tabs populated? Well, we have hundreds and hundreds of other excels that the analysts enter data into from Yardi and from Quickbooks, and which flows into his "master" file. It's a linking/reconciling DISASTER, that only one person at this company knows how to do. My jaw dropped when I learned about the system here and immediately knew I'd have to take on the challenge of finding some way to automate the process here. While some improvements have been made thus far (ie. mapping so that someone doesn't have to hard code all these numbers in from Yardi every month), I need to take it to the next level, hence why I'm on these forums. I need your guys' help here. What is the best consolidations/reconciling software for a company like the one I work at? I've worked a lot with Hyperion/Blackline in the past (but with much larger, much more multinational companies) and wasn't sure if they'd be the right solution for my current company. Any suggestions? Any other solutions you'd propose to someone in my position? Thanks ahead of time for the help PF family.
In dire need of good consolidation software for small but relatively complex RE Invest Group
Answers
Anon,
I'm going to piggy-back along on your question, as I have a similar set of problems.
Cheers,
Keith
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Accounting