Creating a Consolidated Engagement

When you create a new engagement, you will have an option to create a consolidated engagement. You can create either a “Financial” or a “Tax” consolidated engagement where account balances will be summed up across all subsidiaries at either the financial group and sub-group level or the tax group and sub-group level. The engagement created is the consolidated entity, then you will add subsidiary entities.

Notes:

• The grouping list with groups and subgroups is shared across the parent and subsidiary entities. This prevents inconsistencies across subsidiaries.

• The consolidated balances are in real time. If you change balances in a subsidiary, the consolidated balances will immediately be updated. There are no steps to re-calculate consolidated balances.

• Each subsidiary entity in a consolidated engagement is counted as one engagement license. The parent company is not counted as an engagement license.

• The year-end date and tax entity type for the subsidiaries must be the same as the parent company.

• At this time, you cannot consolidate by both financial and tax groups and sub-groups within the same engagement. You will need to create separate engagements if you want consolidated totals for financial and tax consolidated totals.

To create a consolidated engagement, do the following:

1. Click on the navigation bar to go to the Engagement List page.
2. On the Engagement List page, click Start New Engagement.
3. Enter the client name. As you type, the client list from the CCH Axcess Common Client database opens and filters based on the characters you type.

Note: You cannot add a new client from Engagement. You must go to Client Manager in the CCH Axcess Dashboard to add new clients.

4. Enter the engagement name. The engagement name, ID and year-end date must be unique for a client.
5. Enter the ID if needed, this field is optional.
6. Select Year-end date.
7. Select Period start and Period end dates.

   Note: Only annual periods are allowed.

8. Select the engagement type from the list.
9. Select the module that you would like to use for the engagement. See CCH Axcess Engagement Licenses for more information about the modules.

For the Essentials and Pro modules:

10. Select a tax entity type from the list. This information will be used in a future release.
11. Click Yes for Is this a consolidation?

For Knowledge Coach modules:

12. Select the Knowledge Coach title from the list that you would like to use in the engagement.

For all modules:

13. Click Next.
14. Enter details for each subsidiary
    • See Adding Subsidiaries to a Consolidated Engagement

      Note: You must set up a subsidiary before you can import a trial balance. You can create up to 100 subsidiaries.

15. Click Create.

    Note:

    • The new engagement is added to the Engagement List page immediately but is not accessible until the create process completes successfully. You can view progress information in the status message in the top right of the window, or by hovering your pointer over the information badge next to the new engagement.

    • If the process fails, the status message in the top right will indicate that you should retry creating the engagement, and the newly created engagement is removed from the Engagement List page.

16. Do either of the following as needed:

    • Import trial balances for the subsidiaries. Click Import in the Trial Balance column for a subsidiary to import that subsidiary's trial balance. See Importing Trial Balance Data for information about uploading a trial balance.

      Note: Once you have imported a trial balance, a View link displays in the Trial Balance column for the subsidiary. Click this link to go directly to the trial balance page for the subsidiary.

    • Continue to the engagement. Click Engagement View to go to the Engagement View page for the consolidated engagement.