How to do a group consolidation with Claude

Written up from the video How to Do Group Consolidation with Claude AI (Correctly).

You can use Claude to produce a group consolidation, from raw trial balances in different formats and currencies through to a consolidated profit and loss account and balance sheet in your CFO's format, using three prompts with a review stop after each. Claude normalises, maps, translates, reconciles and posts. The decisions that change the group's numbers, such as how to treat an intercompany difference, stay with you.

In the video I consolidate a fictional UK parent and its Dubai subsidiary for January to August 2026, in under an hour. The point is not that Claude can add up two trial balances. It is where the human decision sits, and how the model records it.

The situation

• Two entities: a UK parent reporting in GBP on Xero, and a 100% owned Dubai subsidiary reporting in USD on Zoho Books, acquired on 2 January 2026.
• Four intercompany flows that must disappear on consolidation at every month end: a monthly management fee, a staff recharge at cost plus 10%, a USD 250,000 intercompany loan with rolled-up interest, and two interim dividends.
• FRS 102, GBP as the consolidation currency, and a short group accounting and consolidation policy issued by the CFO.

What you give Claude

Nineteen files in five folders, the way a group accountant actually receives them: system exports, not a tidy workbook.

• Business context for each entity.
• The agreements: management services, staff secondment and recharge, the loan, and the transfer pricing policy.
• Each entity's files: trial balance by month, general ledger extract, chart of accounts, opening balances and intercompany schedule.
• The group folder: the CFO's reporting format, the consolidation policy and daily exchange rates.

Do not tidy the data first. The normalisation is part of the work, and part of the evidence.

Prompt 1: build the foundation

The first prompt reads the context, sets the rules the workbook must obey, sets the layout rules, and then asks for the first milestone only.

• The rules: inputs, workings and outputs on separate sheets; raw data loaded as received and never overtyped; every figure a formula tracing back to the inputs; one sign convention; rates in one place; a check on every sheet and one control sheet; and a decisions log recording every judgement Claude makes and why.
• The milestone: normalise both trial balances into one layout, map both charts of accounts to the group lines and flag anything it cannot map with confidence, and produce the master trial balance with the subsidiary translated under the policy. Do not eliminate anything yet.

Claude came back with a 27-sheet workbook, forty checks and twenty-two logged decisions, plus its questions. It had already found that the intercompany loan did not agree after translation, by GBP 7,583.69 at August, and had left it alone, because the policy requires differences to be investigated before elimination.

Prompt 2: reconcile the intercompany

The second prompt answers Claude's questions in writing, then asks it to read the agreements and reconcile every intercompany balance and transaction at every month end in a matrix: each side, the difference, what it thinks the difference is, and what it would do. Do not post any adjustments. Stop and wait for my decisions.

The matrix found the three problems built into the data: a cut-off error of GBP 6,600 on the August staff recharge, a GBP 140 rate difference from translating at monthly averages what the subsidiary booked at daily spot, and the GBP 7,584 loan difference. On the loan it set out both possible treatments and did not pick one.

Prompt 3: post, eliminate, report

The third prompt starts with my decisions on each difference, then asks Claude to post the corrections as consolidation adjustments (so the input sheets stay as received), post the eliminations at every month end, including the investment against the subsidiary's equity with goodwill and its amortisation, and produce three outputs in the CFO's format: the consolidated P&L, a five-column consolidation view showing each entity, adjustments, eliminations and the group, and the consolidated balance sheet with a balance check in every column.

In real life the entity accountants would correct their own ledgers and send fresh trial balances. Posting the corrections as labelled adjustments is how the video keeps moving while leaving an honest record.

Where your judgement comes in

Three decisions, each of which changes a number in the group accounts, and none of which Claude could make from the data alone:

• The cut-off. The invoice is dated 31 August and the agreement makes it an August cost, so the subsidiary's books are the incomplete ones and the accrual goes there.
• The rate residual. Both entities followed their agreements, so nothing is wrong in either ledger. The difference is a consequence of the translation method, and the group policy sends it to foreign exchange.
• The loan. This is the one that needed a person. Under FRS 102 section 30, an exchange difference on a foreign currency loan goes to profit or loss unless the loan forms part of the net investment in the subsidiary, in which case it goes to equity on consolidation. The agreement makes the loan repayable on demand with repayment expected in 2027, so settlement is planned and it is an ordinary receivable. Had the agreement said otherwise, the same number would have gone to the translation reserve and group profit would have been GBP 7,584 higher. That is a judgement, not a calculation.

What Claude did not do

It did not decide what the loan was. It did not decide whether to accrue the cut-off. It did not change either entity's books. And the model's checks, all reading zero, tell you it is consistent with itself. They do not tell you it is right. That is still the reviewer's job.

To do this with your own group

• Give Claude what your finance teams actually produce, and do not tidy it first.
• Put the rules in the first prompt, so the finished file is something a reviewer or auditor can work through.
• Break the job into milestones and make Claude stop at each one: the foundation before anything is eliminated, the reconciliation before anything is posted, your decisions before the outputs.
• Answer its questions at the top of the next prompt, in writing. They become part of the record.
• When the model comes back, open the control sheet first, then the decisions log, then the numbers.