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In this tutorial, you’ll create a small intercompany transaction, then run the General Ledger report for a single subsidiary, widen it to the whole group, and watch that transaction’s elimination change the total in front of you. By the end, you’ll have compared a single-entity view against a consolidated one and traced the exact dollar effect of the elimination between them: the before/after comparison you’ll reach for anytime you need to trace how much of a consolidated number comes from elimination.

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Prerequisites

  • A parent company with at least one subsidiary. DualEntry automatically creates a paired elimination company under the parent the moment you add the first subsidiary, so there’s nothing to set up for that part. If you don’t have a parent and subsidiary yet, see How to Configure Multi-Entity and Consolidation.
  • Permission to create intercompany journal entries. Admin and Accountant have this by default; Controller can view and edit records but not create them.
  • Permission to view financial reports. Admin, Controller, and Accountant have this by default.

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Step 1: Create a practice intercompany transaction

We’ll start by creating a small intercompany transaction ourselves, so the rest of this tutorial has a known, reproducible entry to trace through the full elimination lifecycle. This tutorial assumes you’re working in a sandbox or test company. We’ll model a $100 management fee the subsidiary owes the parent. Each company’s lines have to balance on their own, so every company block needs at least two lines: one for the transaction itself, and one on IC Accounts Receivable or IC Accounts Payable to carry the intercompany side.
  1. Navigate to Accounting → Transactions → Intercompany Journal Entries, and create a new one.
  2. Set the date to fall within the period you’ll use for the rest of this tutorial.
  3. In the Companies section, add a company block for the parent. Give it two lines: a credit of $100 to any revenue account, and a debit of $100 to IC Accounts Receivable, choosing the subsidiary’s auto-created intercompany customer. Leave Elimination switched on for both lines, it’s on by default for these account types.
  4. Add a second company block for the subsidiary, as the mirror image of the parent’s: a debit of $100 to any expense account, and a credit of $100 to IC Accounts Payable, choosing the parent’s auto-created intercompany vendor. Leave Elimination on here too.
  5. Save and post the entry.
Expected result: each company’s block balances on its own (its debits equal its credits), and the entry posts. This is the transaction you’ll trace through the rest of the tutorial.

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Step 2: Run the report for one subsidiary

  1. Navigate to Reports → Report Center, then choose General Ledger.
  2. In the company filter, select only the subsidiary from Step 1. Leave the parent and the elimination company unselected.
  3. Set the date range to cover the period the transaction posted in.
Expected result: a list of posted transactions for that one company, including the intercompany transaction you just created. The report updates as soon as you change a filter, so there’s no separate step to run it. Find IC Accounts Payable and note its balance: $100. This is your single-entity baseline, before anything is consolidated.

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Step 3: Widen the report to the whole group

  1. Open the company filter again. This time, select the parent, the subsidiary from Step 1, every other subsidiary under it, and the elimination company, all at once.
Expected result: the balance on IC Accounts Payable nets to zero, or close to it. The elimination company carries an offsetting entry against this account, so as soon as it’s part of your selection, it cancels the intercompany balance out. This is the actual consolidated number.

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Step 4: Take the elimination company back out

  1. Open the company filter once more and deselect only the elimination company, keeping the parent and every subsidiary selected.
Expected result: the balance on IC Accounts Payable returns to exactly $100, the figure you saw in Step 2. Adding the other subsidiaries and the parent to the selection didn’t change it, because none of them carry a balance on this account. Only the elimination company does, so removing it puts you right back to the un-eliminated, single-entity number.

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Step 5: See the elimination directly, account by account

Knowing that the balance changed is useful; seeing it cancel out line by line is better.
  1. With the parent, every subsidiary, and the elimination company all selected, open the Pivot button in the report toolbar.
  2. Add Company as a dimension, place it below Account, then choose Apply.
  3. Open the IC Accounts Payable row.
Expected result: the report now groups by account first, then company. Opening IC Accounts Payable reveals two lines sitting right next to each other: your subsidiary’s original $100, and the elimination company’s offsetting entry against the same account. Together, they’re the pair that nets to the figure you saw in Step 3.

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What you built

You created a small intercompany transaction, then ran the same report three ways (one subsidiary, the whole group with the elimination company, and the whole group without it) and watched the IC Accounts Payable balance it created move from $100, to zero, and back again, depending only on whether the elimination company was part of your selection. Then you used Pivot to see the two offsetting lines side by side instead of inferring the effect from a total.

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Next steps

Last modified on September 17, 2026