Choosing consolidation software for Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB

None of the three accounting packages an Australian firm deals with day to day - Xero, QuickBooks Online and MYOB - consolidates a group on its own. Xero's own product ideas forum has carried the request for years; QuickBooks Online has no multi-company consolidation; MYOB's documented answer is to import every company file into a "Master" file by hand. So the consolidation is done by a tool on top, and there are a number of them: Joiin, Fathom and Spotlight Reporting are among the best known, MYOB-specific tools exist as well, and Report Craft is a newer Australian option. If you are comparing them, score each against what your firm actually needs rather than by brand. This guide sets out the criteria that matter and shows where Report Craft fits.

What to compare

• Integrations. Which packages does it connect to - Xero, QuickBooks Online, MYOB - and can it consolidate a group that mixes them? Few groups are tidy enough to be all on one package, and a tool that covers only one leaves the odd entity to be keyed in by hand.
• True consolidation. Beyond summing ledgers, does it support a unified group chart of accounts and intercompany eliminations?
• Report coverage. Can it produce the full statutory pack - compilation report, declaration, P&L, balance sheet, tax schedule, notes - not just management dashboards?
• Pricing model. Is pricing transparent, and how does it scale as you add client entities? Per-entity pricing with monthly minimums adds up quickly for a firm with many small ledgers.
• Local fit. Does it handle the Australian financial year and the report formats your clients expect? A tool built for a Northern-hemisphere year turns every reporting run into a date-range exercise.
• What it does to the source ledger. Consolidation should be a read. If eliminations are posted back into the client's file, or a master file has to be maintained alongside the real ones, the group accounts and the books drift apart and you own both.

Where Report Craft fits

Report Craft is built specifically for accounting firms consolidating client ledgers, with a few deliberate choices:

• Consolidates unlimited Xero organisations, QuickBooks Online companies and MYOB company files - including groups that mix them - into one set of statements.
• Reads the source ledgers and writes nothing back: eliminations live in Report Craft, so the client's file is left as their bookkeeper left it.
• Unified group chart of accounts plus consolidation and elimination entries.
• A complete report bundle exported to a single print-ready PDF.
• Transparent, graduated per-ledger pricing: from $8/month for one ledger down to $1/ledger at volume, with every report type and both integrations included.
• Australian-built, with the 1 July - 30 June financial year handled natively.

The pricing angle

Consolidation tools are often priced per entity or per tenant, sometimes with a monthly minimum. For a firm with a handful of large groups that can be fine; for a firm with many small client ledgers it can get expensive fast. Report Craft's per-ledger rate falls as you connect more ledgers, so the cost scales gently with the size of your practice. Always check each tool's current pricing directly, as vendors change plans over time.

The honest recommendation

If your priority is rich management-reporting dashboards, look closely at the established analytics-focused tools. If your priority is straightforward, standardised consolidated financial statements across Xero and QuickBooks at a price that scales with a growing client base, Report Craft is worth a trial. The fastest way to compare is to run your own group through each - Report Craft offers a live demo and a free trial so you can see the output on real data.

Start with the consolidation reporting overview, or read how to consolidate multiple Xero organisations.