Global consolidation accounting support at a multinational manufacturing company

The client was a global enterprise with 3 major businesses, namely, “Aluminum and metal processing”, “Architectural products” and “Machinery and engineering”.
The company operated in approximately 70 countries and regions worldwide, through its 6 regional headquarters.

In view of improving the group-wide profitability and asset utilization, the client had been working on the enhancement of consolidated management system. However, its accounting department had been in a period of transition for reform and the structure for group consolidated accounting was not at a sufficient level. Therefore, further improvement of work efficiency, speed and accuracy were needed.

Aiming at reinforcing the group consolidated accounting structure of the headquarter accounting department, PFA organized an expert and bilingual team composed of qualified consultants including CPAs and offered support services with resident staffs. The services provided by PFA can be categorized into 2 services: support service that requires a high level of expertise on consolidated accounting and advisory service for the improvement of work processes and systems.

① Support service

The main services provided are as follows:

・Support for quarterly and yearly consolidated account closing.
－　Closely examine the consolidated accounting system data of some overseas subsidiaries
－　Identify data inconsistency between the consolidated accounting data of each company, analyze the reason for difference and make necessary revisions.


・Support for the preparation of disclosure materials
－　Recast the accounting data to accounting items for disclosure
－　Prepare some parts of statutory disclosure materials including annual reports and quarterly reports
－　Prepare English annual reports

・Stand-alone account closing of some overseas subsidiaries
－　Monthly/quarterly/yearly closing
－　Prepare data for consolidated account closing
－Communicate with auditors
・Support for the communication with overseas subsidiaries
－　Preparation (translation) of materials regarding group-wide accounting standards and other transmittals for overseas subsidiaries

② Advisory service for improvement

By providing the above mentioned support services with resident staffs, PFA identified and proposed measures for improvement of work efficiency, speed and accuracy.

Particular proposals and improvements made by PFA include the following:
・Proposal for revision of the group-wide accounting standards and preparation of materials to be provided to overseas entities
・Proposal for introduction of a new accounting system and support for the introduction
・Analysis of bottleneck tasks
・Identification of low value added tasks
・Proposal for reform of work processes and support for the reform

・In the short-term, the workload of headquarter accounting staffs were reduced by outsourcing some tasks to external specialists (PFA). This enabled the reinforcement of the consolidated accounting structure (i.e. human resource) of the group.

・The service provided by the resident staffs from PFA helped the internal accounting staffs improve their skills and knowledge. This lead to the development of in-house capability for group consolidated accounting within the client company.

・By implementing the routine works of the client from an objective viewpoint, PFA professionals identified “unnecessary jobs” and “underproductive jobs”. This resulted in higher work efficiency at the client company.

・Realized early account closing.

・Realized early preparation of annual reports (2 months earlier than before).