After closing, the merger is legally complete and in practice far from it. We provide the financial leadership that brings consolidation, closing calendar, chart of accounts and reporting together in the right order – for a fixed term, alongside day-to-day business.
An acquisition has closed, and the finance department is to turn two worlds of numbers into one. The two entities close on different dates, work with different charts of accounts and interpret the same facts differently – even if both report under HGB.
The integration comes on top of day-to-day business, takes six to twelve months and then ends. Whoever solves it by permanently enlarging the team builds capacity that is no longer needed afterwards.
The interim CFO leads the integration of the finance function in the sequence that holds: first the ability to consolidate, then a joint closing calendar, then a uniform chart of accounts with reconciliation, then joint reporting, and last the joint plan. In the wrong order, each of these steps becomes expensive.
Added to this is what rarely appears in project plans: making differences in accounting practice visible and deliberately harmonising them, reconciling intercompany balances monthly rather than only at year-end, and securing the knowledge of the acquired finance team before staff turnover takes it away.
In buy-and-build strategies the task shifts: then it is not about one integration but about a repeatable procedure for all subsequent acquisitions.
Define the consolidation scope, reconcile investment carrying amounts, identify intercompany balances. Without this step every statement about the combined entity is an estimate.
One reporting date, one deadline, one calendar for both entities. More demanding organisationally than technically.
Uniform chart of accounts with reconciliation rather than a break, then one report with one definition per KPI.
Joint planning last, because it builds on everything above. In parallel, documentation for the permanent appointment.
In preparation before closing, in effect after it. The consolidation scope and the reconciliation of investment carrying amounts can be prepared as soon as the transaction is certain.
Because a change of chart of accounts mid-year without a clean reconciliation makes every prior-year comparison useless. The ability to consolidate comes first.
The preparatory work before the second acquisition costs weeks; after the fifth it costs quarters. It needs a template for chart of accounts and account mapping, a defined 60-day procedure and a consolidation solution that still holds with eight companies.
The integration is peak load alongside the day job and ends after six to twelve months. A permanent enlargement of the team solves a problem that by then no longer exists.
Day rates between EUR 1,400 and 2,500 depending on size and scope of responsibility. The ranges by role are on the pricing page.
The service: Interim CFO for private equity portfolios. How a mandate runs is set out under Interim CFO, day rates by role on the pricing page.
Terms in the glossary: Post-merger integration and ERP migration in finance.
Related situation: ERP and system change in finance.
All triggers for an interim CFO engagement at a glance: triggers overview.