How to Consolidate Multiple Currencies in QuickBooks Online

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If you’re a finance professional working with multiple entities in QuickBooks Online (QBO), consolidating multiple currencies can be a chore.

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To simplify your workflow and save time, we've compiled a step-by-step guide to manually consolidating multiple currencies in QBO.

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In this article, we also run through how to automate multiple currency consolidation from QuickBooks Online using our LiveFlow platform, saving our average customer over 25 hours a month on consolidated reporting tasks.

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Consolidating Currencies in QuickBooks Online

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First things first: QuickBooks Online doesn’t exactly offer consolidation within its platform. 

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However, let’s start by reviewing everything you can do in QBO to get your reports prepared for consolidation, and from there, examine the steps you need to take to consolidate multiple currency entities. 

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Before you start, make sure to check our QuickBooks Online best practices guide to ensure the best experience inside QBO.

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Up to date on your QuickBooks Online best practices? Great. Let’s get started.

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Step 1: Get your Chart of Accounts in Order

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Because preparing for multiple currency consolidation involves a lot of manual review of your books to ensure consistency, it isn’t quick. However, the work you put in early will make the later steps much easier. 

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Start by ensuring your Chart of Accounts is organized and built set up for your business.

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Creating a uniform and organized COA will allow you to adhere to industry standards and ensure compliance.

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If you have any more questions about your COA, check out this guide featuring everything you need about QuickBooks Online’s Chart of Accounts. 

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Step 2: Customize Reporting Preferences

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Because you cannot consolidate your QBO data inside the QuickBooks Online platform, make sure your reporting preferences are perfectly tailored to your liking. This will save you time in Google Sheets and Excel later, and no one here has time to waste. 

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Creating customized reporting rules eases any issues combining data later. QuickBooks Online allows for data aggregation by entity, account, or period. 

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During this step, you must set rules for currency conversion rates, consolidation methods, and intercompany eliminations. 

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At this point, your data will be set to create reports exactly as you wish, and it’s time to import it into a spreadsheet.

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Step 3: Generate Consolidated Reports

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Once you’ve got your data set to be reported as you wish, you will be able to generate your consolidated reports in Excel or Google Sheets. 

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QuickBooks Online lays the framework for you: your Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and/or Balance Sheet can all be exported from the platform and brought into Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, or the spreadsheet app of your choosing.

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To consolidate your reports from QuickBooks Online, you’ll need to manually export each report to your spreadsheet. 

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Each report will be in a separate sheet, and you’ll have to go through and consolidate them yourself. This involves converting currency data manually, which can be quite difficult with constantly shifting exchange rates.

For example, say your client has entities in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States, you would need to complete the following steps:

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• Export your balance sheet for each entity from QuickBooks Online into your spreadsheet in multiple tabs.

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• Choose the default currency you will be reporting in for your consolidated report.

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• Find current exchange rates for each currency. In this case GBP to USD and CAD to USD.

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• Convert currencies manually using cumbersome Excel formulas.

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• Pray that there isn’t a black swan event in the global currency market, invalidating all your currency conversion work.

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Sounds awful, right? Good news! We have an easier way.

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Consolidate QBO Data with Multiple Currencies in LiveFlow

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Enter LiveFlow.

LiveFlow is an advanced reporting platform that pulls your QuickBooks Online data into over 100 customizable templates, and lets you create live, impactful reporting in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel in just minutes. Creating and sharing dashboards quickly with your clients or team has never been easier.

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On top of that, LiveFlow also has a consolidation offering, and can crush consolidated reports from your QuickBooks Online data. Whether you’re dealing with franchises or, international subsidiaries, or another multi-entity situation, LiveFlow has you covered.

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With LiveFlow, you can skip all of the tedious work we just outlined, and Let us do the work for you: everything from building templates for your spreadsheets to consolidating and converting currencies.

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With functionality for more than 180 currencies, it’s a safe bet we can save you time and money consolidating your multiple currency financials. 

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Simply select the currency you wish your final report to be in, and within minutes, you will have a completed consolidated report in the appropriate currency. 

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Our consolidation tool is designed to handle anything: multiple currencies, inconsistent ledger names, and much more. 

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We allow you to drill down into data, finding the source of any figure on your report without ever having to go back into QBO. 

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And we know what you’re thinking. That sounds too good to be true, it’d save you so much time every month. You’d be right. Our customers save up to 25 hours per month on consolidation alone. 

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Piqued your interest? Book a walkthrough with our team today and let’s break down how LiveFlow can save you time and stress on your multi-currency consolidated reporting.

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