Intercompany accounting is typically downplayed, oversimplified, and hastily swept under the rug so you can “deal with it on another day”. While this may have been acceptable back in the day, today’s consequences are becoming harsher, and companies need to realize that it’s finally time to tidy up the situation.

Here’s why improper intercompany accounting practices are increasing corporate risk and what companies can do to rectify the situation.

An Overview of the Current Intercompany Situation

For any company that has ever consolidated, merged, or expanded globally, intercompany relationship management is key. When companies significantly evolve and expand their global reach, the number of intercompany transactions that are generated spirals upwards.

These are usually complicated further by local tax policies, regulations, currencies, transfer pricing, and different systems that the different companies within one entity might use.

Intercompany reconciliation is required to eliminate any out-of-balance accounts and rogue transactions that could have a serious impact on financial statements. This can then catch the attention of auditors and regulators, which will lead to compliance problems, fines, lawsuits, and more.

That’s why companies need proper intercompany accounting practices in place. But that’s not to say all companies follow these precise rules. As companies evolve, the volume of intercompany transactions also increases. That means there are more spreadsheets, invoices, journals, emails, and verbal approvals to keep track of.

Intercompany accounting and management then becomes so complex, the mere task of reconciliation also becomes complex, laborious, and incredibly time consuming.

In those cases, it’s tempting to put off intercompany tasks or complete them to a substandard quality. This denial and neglect is one of the biggest issues that surround intercompany accounting and a main reason why companies are exposing themselves to increased financial, compliance, and reputational risk.

What Are the Risks of Improper Intercompany Accounting?

Three main company functions are affected by improper intercompany accounting (ICA) practices:

• Accounting
• Tax
• Treasury

Accounting

In terms of accounting, the main risk of improper ICA practices are financial statements that include both incorrect figures and reports. This can significantly affect the company’s reputation, stock price, and shareholder value—not to mention the increase in risk of serious penalties, such as fines and jail time.

Improper ICA practices can also reduce transparency because unscrupulous professionals can be given the opportunity to illegally redistribute business assets. For example, they may affect the flow of assets coming out of the organization, hiding them in fictitious accounts instead of where they’re supposed to be.

Tax

Each country has its own tax laws. Accurate IC reporting will highlight any discrepancies and allow companies to reconcile these entries. Inaccurate reporting, however, will lead to misclassified profits between countries and ultimately result in tax penalties, increased interest, and damage to reputation.

Treasury

The treasury receives details of all intercompany transactions and is responsible for managing and settling the invoices. Improper ICA will lead to an incomplete, inaccurate list of intercompany balances that are due to be settled. This leads to trade imbalances as companies will struggle to settle all of their liabilities by period close if they have gaps in their reports.

Unresolved liabilities will impact intercompany liquidity because they can cause financial gains and losses that are unaccounted for.

How Can Companies Rectify These Issues?

The most common challenges of improper ICA practices are non-standardized procedures and difficulties in matching transactions and settling liabilities during reconciliation.

Many companies are unaware that they can use specialized technology to help them with ICA, or, if they are aware of its existence, they aren’t using it properly or are using the wrong type for their requirements.

So when you’re looking for the correct software to aid you with your intercompany practices, you should consider the following functionalities:

• Clearly outlines and automates according to local governance and policies – software that can automate intercompany transactions according to local rules and regulations means you can easily eliminate the risks of inaccurate tax reports.

• Automated transfer pricing – appropriate software can automatically use the natural price for an intercompany transaction, altering it according to different scenarios and requirements.

• Keeping data in one centralized location – typically, companies rely on a mix of spreadsheets, loose invoices, emails, and even verbal exchanges. This might be convenient at the time, but it will only serve to overcomplicate reconciliation. Software can help by keeping all this data in a single location, reducing the risk of lost invoices and reporting inaccuracies.

• Managing transactions and workflows – software can simplify the workflow approval process between sender and receiver by sending approvals to both parties. This means both parties can take action on the request as soon as it appears, which is useful for companies in different time zones. It also helps to systematically control who is responsible for the current task and what will be coming next.

• Aging analysis – when companies are unable to settle their balances in full, they will often be left with partially unpaid invoices. These invoices can easily become buried under new invoices, and they might reach their expiration date before they are remembered again. Software that provides aging analysis helps to prevent this by automatically ordering the invoices with the oldest first so companies can always be aware of these unpaid balances.

• Matching payables and receivables – payables and receivables can easily be raised at various times by different companies using unrelated systems. Companies will then struggle to match up these invoices with each other. Software can help eliminate this issue by producing payables with receivables at the same time and linking them so changes in one will automatically be made in the other.

• Compatible with all sources of data – not all corporate systems are compatible with every type of data. This then requires companies to convert their data into the appropriate format before they import it into their systems. The right software will be able to handle any type of data so you no longer need to convert. You can simply import immediately, which reduces the risk of manual error.

It’s Important You Choose the Right Intercompany Accounting Software

Half of the battle is knowing that ICA technology exists; the other half is knowing which type of software to use—there’s certainly more than one type and not all will be suited to your company’s IC requirements.

The most common solutions are: outsourcing an expert team to develop a customized software for you, developing the software in-house, Oracle AGIS, or Virtual Trader. Want to read more on these popular IC software applications and how they compare against each other? Download our ultimate comparison guide below.