Organising related companies as a client group
How a firm organises a family of related companies, trusts and individuals as one client group in Achekam, and what that does and does not do.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A business owner rarely arrives as one client. There is the operating company, the property company that owns the premises, the family trust that holds the shares, a dormant company kept for a future venture, the owner personally and often the spouse. Each needs its own statements or returns. Together they are one relationship, one set of decisions and frequently one person paying the bills.
A firm that records them as six unrelated clients loses sight of that relationship. Fees get negotiated entity by entity, risks are assessed in isolation, and a new manager may not realise that the property company's rent is the operating company's largest expense. Organising them as a group fixes the view without merging what must stay separate.
Why groups matter for billing and risk
Grouping is not a filing preference. It changes how the firm sees three things.
- Fees. The owner thinks in terms of what the family pays the firm in total. Seeing the group together lets a partner price and discuss the whole relationship, rather than defending each entity's fee separately.
- Risk and acceptance. A firm can record a client acceptance review after a conflict check against its own clients and contacts, and only a signed-in partner can approve it. Conflicts and concerns often sit at group level: a dispute involving the trust affects how the firm should view the companies it controls.
- Access. Partners and administrators can restrict a client, or one engagement, to named people with a reason. If one entity in a family is restricted for a good reason, consider whether its related entities should be too.
Creating a group and adding entities
The client directory is kept on Achekam's server, with clients added through a step-by-step wizard or a CSV import. Each entity remains a client in its own right, with its own record, services and engagements.
Groups sit on top. Under CLIENTS > Client Groups and Client Entities, staff can see clients grouped under their parent group, and can create a group and add entities to it.
A sensible order when setting up a family:
- Create or confirm each entity as its own client, with its own registration and tax numbers.
- Create the group, named so that colleagues recognise it, usually after the family or the main operating company.
- Add each entity to the group.
- Record on each entity's profile how it relates to the others, such as the trust holding the shares.
Be deliberate about what counts as one group. Two brothers who each own a business are often better as two groups that happen to be related than as one, because their decisions are separate.
Keep the entities' own details separate too. Each company in a family has its own registration number, tax numbers, year-end and authorised signatories. Grouping puts them side by side; it does not mean a director who signs for the operating company may approve the trust's statements. Record the right contacts on each entity's own record.
Engagement counts per entity
The group view shows each group's entities with their engagement counts. That simple count is surprisingly useful:
| What you see | What it may mean |
|---|---|
| An entity with no engagement | A dormant company, or work the firm is doing without an engagement |
| An entity with more engagements than expected | Additional services, or duplicates to tidy up |
| A group where only one entity has engagements | The firm serves the operating company but not the rest of the family |
The last row is often an opportunity: the owner may be using another adviser, or nobody, for the trust and the personal returns.
Group audits and consolidations
Where the group needs consolidated financial statements, two separate questions arise: whether consolidation is required, and how the firm will produce it.
Whether a parent must consolidate is a matter for the applicable framework. The IFRS Foundation's summary of IFRS 10 Consolidated Financial Statements explains the control principle that decides when a parent must prepare consolidated statements for the entities it controls. Grouping clients in Achekam records how the firm sees a family, not whether control exists in the IFRS 10 sense, so the two should not be confused.
How the firm produces consolidated statements is constrained: Achekam has no engine that consolidates the accounts of a group of businesses. Each entity's statements can be prepared in Achekam, but the consolidation itself is prepared outside it, with the eliminations and workings kept on file. The approach is covered in consolidated statements without an engine.
For a group audit, Achekam does support the audit process itself. Staff record components with their scope, materiality and component auditors, issue instructions, and each component auditor works through a portal link to acknowledge, upload deliverables and report misstatements. The token in the link is the only credential, so send it only to the component auditor it was made for.
Keeping the structure current
Families change: companies are sold, trusts are wound up, a child joins the business with a new entity. A group that was right three years ago may now mislead.
Review each group at the owner's annual meeting. Ask what has changed in the family's structure, add new entities, and archive entities the firm no longer serves rather than leaving them looking active. Note changes in ownership on the profiles, because the relationships between entities matter as much as the list of names. What belongs on each entity's own record is set out in what to keep on each client record.
Choose your three largest family relationships, set each up as a group this month, and look at the engagement counts together with the partner who owns the relationship.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
