By simply checking a box, I eliminate intercompany transactions from the figures.

Consolidate in no time

Easily detect and consolidate intercompany transactions: it’s a must for Linum Group. After all, the company has some 15 companies in various countries, including one with a different currency. Finance Business Partner Eline Demeulemeester provides insight into the group’s financial performance via BrightAnalytics. And… this can sometimes lead to a bit of competition between the branch managers, it seems.

“When I joined the company about three years ago, I was immediately allowed to start implementing BrightAnalytics”, says Eline enthusiastically. “Until then, we had worked with Excel for the financial reporting: data was taken from Centric FINACC – our ERP system – and loaded into Excel. Since the Linum Group has about 15 large and small companies, the figures from all these companies had to be put next to each other and all sorts of manipulations were often required, including the consolidation. A lot of work, not very efficient and enormously time-consuming.”

Check box

Through their external accountant VGD, the Linum Group discovered the BrightAnalytics solution. “Because I never worked with such tools before I started here, I obviously can’t compare. But BrightAnalytics works so well for me that there is no need to question it. Today, our entire financial reporting is done via BrightAnalytics: from the monthly closing for our Belgian companies to the quarterly closing for our foreign subsidiaries.”

Eline also uses the system to track bookings, check that monthly charges are definitely in the system, and for consolidation. “We count a lot of intercompany transactions between our companies. By simply checking a box, I can eliminate it from the figures. This gives us an overall picture of the figures without these transactions at the click of a mouse. I can also easily check whether every intercompany sale by one of our companies is also matched by a purchase by another during the same period.”

Automatic and manual updates

The fact that Eline can do manual updates herself in BrightAnalytics is, in her opinion, an important asset. “Of course, the system does an automatic update every night: then the data are read in from Centric FINACC. But if I work on the figures during the day, I like to be able to do manual updates afterwards. This way I can immediately see the real-time results and I know whether everything is right in the system. I decide for myself which companies I want to see the figures of or group them together. For example, for the German manager I report the two German companies together in one overview. For our Swiss subsidiary, it is in turn convenient that I can report the figures – depending on the objective – in both EUR and CHF.”

For now, Eline is the only one working with BrightAnalytics. She downloads the reports and distributes them to the management, among others, but in the future they should also be able to view reports in the system themselves. “We then decide who sees which figures, and only give users access to the period for which the figures have already effectively been closed. That way everyone talks about the same thing. This is further supported by BrightAnalytics’ clear, user-friendly layout, which is the same across the companies. At last week’s management meeting, this led to some amusing moments when branch managers began to compare the performance of their company or companies and the competitive spirit reared its head. What’s also handy is the fact that our external accountant has access to the system and can see our figures live. If I contact them with a question, they can look at the numbers right away.”

Finally, she mentions the collaboration with BrightAnalytics: “If I ever have a question or problem, I always get a very quick answer. When we wanted to add our new Austrian company to the system, the link was made within a few days. What I also appreciate is that BrightAnalytics also asks for our input for a planned update. They take into account what we as a customer need in our daily operations. Great!”