Most providers can process four entities. Far fewer can consolidate them. The difference is whether intercompany balances agree on both sides, whether treatment is consistent across every entity, and whether payroll tax grouping and GST grouping have been assessed rather than assumed. This guide compares eight providers that handle group work properly, plus the consolidation tools worth using if you keep the work in-house. Complete multi-entity finance functions generally run $2,500 to $6,000 or more per month.
Last reviewed: August 2026
The single-entity version of this work is bookkeeping. The group version is a different job, because most of the difficulty sits between the entities rather than inside them.
Intercompany balances have to agree on both sides. Entity A's loan receivable is Entity B's loan payable, and if the two are maintained independently they drift, usually by a small amount every month, until someone has to reconstruct three years of transfers to establish which one is right.
Recharges change the profit and loss depending on treatment. Whether an entity acts as agent or as principal determines whether a recharge is revenue or a reduction in cost, and it determines the GST treatment. Applied inconsistently across a group, it overstates revenue everywhere.
Grouping rules operate at group level, not entity level. GST grouping is optional and worth assessing where entities transact heavily with each other. Payroll tax grouping is not optional: where entities are grouped under the relevant state's rules, the threshold applies to the group's combined Australian wages, so four entities each comfortably under the threshold individually can be well over it collectively. Most businesses discover this when a revenue office writes to them.
And the practical failure is simpler than any of that. A bookkeeper doing each entity in isolation, competently, produces four sets of books that do not consolidate. Different chart of accounts, different treatment of the same intercompany transaction, different close dates. Nothing is wrong in any single file, and the group numbers are unusable.
Ask any prospective provider these before you compare fees.
How do you maintain intercompany balances? The right answer involves both sides maintained by the same team and reconciled monthly. Anything else drifts.
Have you assessed our payroll tax grouping position? A provider who has not raised grouping before you did is not thinking at group level.
Will you produce a consolidation, or four sets of books? Consolidation requires a common chart of accounts, consistent treatment and the same close date across every entity. It is a design decision, not a reporting step.
Who reviews the intercompany and the elimination entries? This is where errors are both most likely and hardest to unwind later, and it is the work that most needs a qualified reviewer.
One technical point worth knowing before any sales conversation: Xero does not consolidate multiple organisations natively. Every provider on this list solves it either with a monthly consolidation workpaper on a common chart of accounts, or with a third-party consolidation tool connected to each file. Both depend entirely on consistent account codes and reconciled intercompany balances, so a provider promising consolidation without first fixing your chart of accounts is promising something they cannot deliver.
We looked for demonstrated group capability rather than the ability to process several entities: consolidated reporting, intercompany treatment, grouping assessment and a qualified review layer. Every provider listed is a real, operating service, checked against its own website in August 2026. Pricing shown is indicative from public information and should be confirmed directly. Scale Suite publishes this guide and appears first.
Scale Suite, which is us, runs one team across every entity in the group on a consistent chart of accounts and a single close timetable: per-entity bookkeeping and bank reconciliation, intercompany loan and recharge treatment reconciled on both sides, BAS and IAS per entity as registered BAS agents (registration 26298194), GST grouping assessment, payroll tax grouping assessment and lodgement across states, group payroll including employees paid by one entity and working in another, and consolidated management reporting alongside per-entity accounts with elimination entries and working papers. CA-qualified review focuses specifically on consolidation and intercompany.
The single point of accountability is the argument. Four bookkeepers produce four opinions about the same intercompany transfer. One team produces a consolidation that ties, and one compliance calendar covering every entity and every obligation.
Indicative pricing: Published. Multi-entity groups typically $2,500 to $6,000 per month, driven by combined transaction volume, payroll headcount and whether consolidated reporting is required. Rolling monthly, no lock-in, 30-day money-back guarantee.Best fit: Australian groups with two or more trading entities on Xero, including trust and company structures and property or project entity splits.The catch: Xero across every entity. Mixed environments where one entity sits on another platform do not work for group reporting, because the consolidation is only as consistent as the least consistent file. We have declined group work on Dynamics, Movex and MYOB for that reason, and legal trust accounting is outside our scope.
Service page: multi-entity and group finance.
Liston Newton is a Melbourne-headquartered accounting and advisory firm with more than forty years of history and offices across several states, covering business accounting and tax, Xero bookkeeping, business structures, virtual and fractional CFO services, SMSF, lending and financial advisory.
For group work the relevant capability is structures. Liston Newton advises on company, partnership and trust structures alongside doing the accounting, which matters because most group problems originate in a structure decision made years earlier for asset protection or tax reasons and never revisited as the group grew. They also hold tax agent capability, so trust distributions and Division 7A sit in the same place as the bookkeeping.
Indicative pricing: Published as a range; engagements scoped after a strategy session, free for businesses above $500,000 revenue and otherwise $550, credited if you proceed. Confirm directly.Best fit: Groups where the structure itself is part of the question, particularly trust and company combinations with distribution and Division 7A exposure.The catch: A full-service firm rather than a dedicated group finance operations team. Ask specifically what the monthly consolidated deliverable is and on what date it arrives.
Lucent Advisory is an Adelaide-based, nationally operating firm of Chartered Accountants, certified payroll managers and HR practitioners, delivering outsourced bookkeeping and accounting, taxation, payroll, HR administration and virtual CFO through one integrated model. It has been running since 2005, has a team of more than forty, anchors its stack on Employment Hero, and publishes fixed-fee pricing with services available modularly or fully integrated.
The relevant strength for groups is the combination of finance, payroll and HR in one workflow. Group payroll across entities, where employees are paid by one entity and work in another, is one of the harder parts of multi-entity work and one of the main triggers for payroll tax grouping.
Indicative pricing: Fixed-fee, published as transparent pricing on scoping rather than as a public rate card. Confirm directly.Best fit: Groups wanting finance, payroll and HR administration handled together under one integrated provider.The catch: Adelaide-based with a national footprint, so confirm how state-specific obligations are handled for each jurisdiction your entities employ in.
William Buck is a national mid-tier accounting firm running outsourced accounting and CFO advisory alongside audit, tax and corporate advisory. For groups this is the category that matters once entities in the group are audited, or once a transaction is in view, because finance operations, tax structuring and audit converge under one brand and one set of working papers.
Indicative pricing: On application. Mid-tier outsourced finance engagements commonly run $5,000 to $15,000 or more per month depending on scope and entity count. Confirm directly.Best fit: Larger groups with audited entities, or groups heading into a sale, a raise or a restructure.The catch: Mid-tier rates reflect mid-tier overhead, and independence rules mean the firm auditing your group generally cannot also run its finance function. Establish which service you are buying before you engage.
Digit is an outsourced bookkeeping provider headquartered in Perth with a team across Perth and Manila, holding Tax Practitioners Board BAS agent registration and Xero Platinum Partner status, delivering bookkeeping, payroll, BAS and management reporting on fixed fees with no lock-in. Its published model uses a team rather than an individual, with cross-cover so work continues when someone is on leave, which is directly relevant to groups because a single bookkeeper covering four entities is a single point of failure four times over.
Indicative pricing: Published from $850 per month for single-entity bookkeeping; group work scoped on combined volume. Confirm directly.Best fit: Groups wanting systematised per-entity bookkeeping and BAS at the lower end of the market, with the consolidation layer handled elsewhere or by a tool.The catch: Positioned as bookkeeping and reporting rather than group finance with a senior consolidation review layer. Ask directly whether consolidated reporting with eliminations is in scope, and who reviews it.
Standard Ledger works with startups and scaleups nationally, running bookkeeping through to CFO support with financial modelling, due diligence preparation, R&D tax incentive work and ESOP administration as standard. The group-relevant capability is structural: startups accumulate entities quickly, through a holding company for intellectual property, an operating entity, sometimes an offshore subsidiary and an employee share scheme trust, and Standard Ledger works with that shape routinely.
Indicative pricing: Published package tiers, commonly from around $1,000 per month for early-stage bookkeeping, scaling with CFO support and entity count. Confirm directly.Best fit: Startup and scaleup groups with a holding company structure, an ESOP, or investor reporting obligations across entities.The catch: Built for the raise-grow-raise cycle. An established trading group with heavy transaction volume and no capital-raising plans is outside the core client base.
SBO Financial is a virtual CFO and accounting firm built around ecommerce, SaaS and digital agencies, working nationally with Xero integrated into sales channels. Its relevance to group work is specific rather than general: online businesses frequently run several entities across markets and currencies, and SBO builds three-way models covering profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow together, which is the format a group needs when foreign currency and intercompany recharges both affect the result.
Indicative pricing: Not published; scoped after a profitability analysis call. Confirm directly.Best fit: Ecommerce, SaaS and agency groups with multiple entities, multiple currencies or multiple sales channels.The catch: The vertical focus is real and the group capability follows the vertical. A construction group with entity-per-project structures is outside it.
S&B Private recruits, trains and integrates offshore accounting professionals directly into a client's own finance team, founded by Melbourne accounting practice owners who built the model to solve their own resourcing problem. For groups with existing internal finance leadership, the per-entity processing load is exactly the work that suits additional capacity, leaving your controller to own the consolidation and the review.
Indicative pricing: Per seat, quoted on requirements. Confirm directly.Best fit: Groups with a financial controller or finance manager in place who need per-entity processing capacity rather than a function.The catch: You get capacity, not accountability. Consolidation design, intercompany review and lodgement responsibility stay with you, and BAS-relevant work must be supervised in line with Tax Practitioners Board requirements. See TPB supervision of offshore BAS work.
Where you have internal finance capability and the gap is only the group reporting layer, a consolidation tool connected to each Xero file is a much cheaper answer than a provider. Xero does not consolidate multiple organisations natively, and the established options connect to each file, map accounts to a group chart, automate intercompany eliminations and produce consolidated profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow reporting. Joiin, dataSights, Spotlight Reporting, Fathom and Syft Analytics all operate in this space, and several handle multi-currency and mixed-ledger groups where entities sit on different accounting platforms.
Two cautions. First, every one of these tools produces a consolidation only as good as the underlying consistency: a common chart of accounts, consistent treatment and reconciled intercompany balances. A tool applied to four inconsistent files produces a fast wrong answer instead of a slow one. Second, a tool does not assess payroll tax grouping, GST grouping or Division 7A. Those need a person.
Pricing is driven by combined transaction volume and payroll headcount more than by entity count on its own, because a group of four dormant entities is far less work than two busy ones. As a rule of thumb, a second operating entity typically adds 40 to 70 per cent of the first entity's cost rather than doubling it, and dormant entities add a small fixed amount. Complete multi-entity finance functions generally run $2,500 to $6,000 or more per month depending on combined volume, payroll and reporting depth.
What consistently adds cost is consolidation, intercompany volume, multi-state payroll and audited entities. Full market context is in how much does an outsourced finance team cost in Australia.
One thing not to do to save money: running two entities through one Xero file with tracking categories. It looks cheaper and fails at the first BAS, because GST, payroll and financial statements are entity-level legal obligations rather than reporting preferences.
Complete multi-entity functions generally run $2,500 to $6,000 or more per month. A second operating entity typically adds 40 to 70 per cent of the first entity's cost rather than doubling it, and dormant entities add a small fixed amount. Volume and payroll drive the fee more than entity count.
Not natively. Xero manages individual organisations, so a group consolidation comes either from a monthly workpaper on a common chart of accounts with intercompany eliminations, or from a third-party tool connected to each file. Both depend on consistent account codes and reconciled intercompany balances.
To the group, where the entities are grouped under the relevant state's rules, typically through common ownership, common control or shared employees. The threshold applies to combined Australian wages rather than to each entity. Tests and thresholds differ by state and change, so confirm with each relevant revenue office. See payroll tax grouping.
It can reduce administration where entities transact heavily with each other, because supplies between group members are generally disregarded and one member lodges for the group. It can also complicate matters where entities have different GST profiles. It has tax consequences, so the decision belongs with a registered tax agent. Background in GST grouping for multi-entity businesses.
With mirrored entries in both entities, using dedicated due to and due from accounts, reconciled monthly so the two sides net to zero. Left unreconciled for a year it becomes a reconstruction exercise, and where entities have different owners or a trust is involved it can create tax consequences nobody intended. See multi-entity bookkeeping, intercompany loans and group reporting.
Some can, and several consolidation tools handle mixed ledgers. It is still the harder path, because consistency of treatment across platforms has to be maintained manually. If you have a choice, standardising the group on one platform removes more cost than any tool saves.
For management purposes, yes, once entities trade with each other, because per-entity reporting alone will overstate group revenue. Whether you need statutory consolidated statements depends on your reporting obligations and any audit requirement. See does your company need an audit.
Only a registered BAS agent or tax agent, where a fee is charged, and the obligation applies per entity. Check any provider's registration on the Tax Practitioners Board public register. Scale Suite's registration is 26298194.
Scale Suite is a Sydney-based provider of outsourced finance teams and fractional CFO services for Australian SMEs, including multi-entity and group structures. We deliver weekly bookkeeping, payroll, BAS/IAS lodgement, cashflow reporting, management accounts, and strategic fractional CFO oversight, all as a fully embedded team that works inside your business.
CA-qualified, Xero Certified, and registered BAS Agents, we replace fragmented bookkeepers and once-a-year accountants with one responsive finance function at a fraction of the cost of full-time hires. We serve growing businesses across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, with packages starting from $1,500 per month and no lock-in contracts.
We review and check this guide periodically. At the time of writing (August 2026), all information was current. Scale Suite is a registered BAS Agent, not a registered tax agent, and this content is general information only rather than professional tax, financial or legal advice. GST grouping, payroll tax grouping and trust matters have tax consequences and should be confirmed with a registered tax agent and the relevant state revenue office. Provider details and pricing change; confirm directly before engaging.
Sources
Tax Practitioners Board public register: https://www.tpb.gov.au/public-register
Provider websites and published pricing pages, reviewed August 2026.Xero published guidance on multi-entity accounting, for the position that Xero does not consolidate organisations natively.State and territory revenue offices, for payroll tax grouping provisions.
Scale Suite is a Sydney-based provider of outsourced finance and HR services for Australian SMEs. We deliver bookkeeping, financial reporting, payroll processing, fractional CFO support, recruitment, employee onboarding, people and culture support, and fractional HR oversight, all as a fully embedded team that works inside your business.
Employment Hero Gold Partner, CA-qualified, and Xero Certified, we replace fragmented finance and HR processes with one responsive, senior-level function at a fraction of the cost of full-time hires. We serve growing businesses across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, with packages starting from $1,500 per month and no lock-in contracts.
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