Around the globe are volumes of legal regulations, or the equivalent, which require the reporting of consolidated financial statements and determine their contents. In addition, similar reporting regulations exist for listings on certain stock exchanges. In some cases, these consolidation regulations require (only) one consolidation on a legal entity level, but more in-depth details for particular statements.

For this purpose this section will, first of all, present the ‘simple form’ of consolidation, placing emphasis not on the consolidation options, but rather on the subjects ‘Preparations for Consolidation’ and ‘Data Transfers’. ‘Preparations for Consolidation’ implies those that can be made in various applications for the individual financial statements, in order to automatically transfer as much important data as possible from the respective individual financial statement needed later for the eliminating entries and currency translation. The following sections deal with these aspects and should help you in taking precautionary measures during Customizing, when implementing, say, an FI System. This is of consequence, even if the Consolidation System is to be implemented at a much later date.