Finance Transformation

Crestline Industries operates as a group of four legal entities across related business lines, each maintaining its own chart of accounts and financial records with only loose consistency between them. Group-level consolidation is performed manually in spreadsheets each month.

This process regularly takes over two weeks and leaves limited time for the finance team to actually analyse results before the next cycle begins. Intercompany transactions between entities are tracked separately by each entity's finance team, frequently leading to mismatches that must be manually investigated and resolved before consolidation can be finalised.

The engagement starts with a structured chart of accounts redesign and entity mapping exercise, run in close collaboration with the group financial controller to ensure the new structure supports both statutory and management reporting needs. Entity configuration and data migration then proceed in a phased sequence — starting with the parent entity, followed by each subsidiary — with each entity going through a validated trial close before being considered fully live.

A Dynamics 365 Finance implementation built around a redesigned, standardised chart of accounts applied consistently across all four entities, with native multi-entity and intercompany functionality replacing the manual spreadsheet consolidation process entirely.

Group-level financial consolidation that once took over two weeks can typically be completed in a fraction of that time, giving leadership access to consolidated results while they are still actionable.

Intercompany reconciliation is generally handled automatically within the system rather than through manual cross-checking between entity finance teams — removing what is often the most time-consuming part of the old close process.