Intercompany Business

Larger organizations are normally organized into multiple legal entities. These entities may be separated along product lines, countries, or other business attributes. Whenever this happens, you will have to deal with data crossing the boundaries between entities: the subsidiary in, say, Japan, may do business with Japanese customers, but may also provide products or services to the subsidiary in India. Invoices sent to India may be counted in sales numbers for Japan, but should be consolidated when reporting the worldwide sales numbers. That is, assuming that the India subsidiary booked the purchases from Japan correctly.

A similar challenge arises when business crosses other boundaries. For instance, a company that executes multi-year projects for customers, or sells multi-year support contracts, has to answer questions about what part of the total sales on each project or contract is counted as sales in a specific year. With this, you can provide more...