Intercompany accounts are the ledger accounts dedicated to recording flows between entities of the same group, kept separate from third-party accounts so they can be extracted at consolidation without being hunted for. They are a structural choice in the chart of accounts, made once and lived with for years.
Three approaches exist, and they are not equivalent. Some groups use dedicated accounts in the plan comptable général, typically the 18 range for liaison accounts and the 45 range of the intercompany ledger. Others keep flows in ordinary trade accounts and mark the counterparty with an analytical flag or a partner code. The best-equipped use both, a dedicated account plus a counterparty dimension.
The counterparty dimension is what separates a workable setup from a painful one. An intercompany account that aggregates all group counterparties into a single balance tells you the entity owes 480,000 euros to the group, but not to whom. Splitting by counterparty, whether through sub-accounts or an analytical axis, is what makes a balance justifiable rather than merely known.
This structure is the operational expression of the mirror rule set out in reciprocal accounts: the accounts hold the two sides, the reciprocity principle says they must net to zero. A well-structured setup does not prevent an intercompany mismatch, but it turns finding one into a query rather than an investigation.
Where the setup differs between entities, and it usually does after acquisitions, the reconciliation has to work across incompatible structures. Phacet's intercompany flow reconciliation agent matches entries by meaning rather than by account number, and consolidating data from multiple ERPs reads each entity in its own format.
