Reciprocal accounts are the paired ledger accounts that record the two sides of an internal flow, one in each entity's books. They are the accounting expression of the mirror principle: what one entity of the group records as a receivable, the other must record as a payable, for the same amount and the same period.
Their defining property is that they must balance to zero against each other. A receivable of 40 000 euros in entity A against entity B, and a payable of 40 000 euros in entity B against entity A, cancel exactly. Any residual is an intercompany mismatch by definition, and it must be explained before the group can close.
Three families of accounts are involved. Trade accounts flagged as group counterparties carry commercial flows such as sales and purchases between entities. Current accounts carry financing flows and intragroup loans. Dedicated liaison accounts, common in French charts of accounts, isolate group flows so that they can be extracted at consolidation without hunting through third-party balances.
Justifying reciprocal accounts is a mandatory step before consolidation, not a nice-to-have. It is the evidence base on which every intercompany elimination rests, and the first thing an auditor asks for on a multi-entity group. The practical obstacle is that each entity numbers, labels and dates its side of the same intercompany transaction differently, especially on different ERPs.
Phacet's intercompany flow reconciliation agent matches the two sides across all entities, documents each pair with a traceable audit trail and surfaces every residual as an exception with the context needed to clear it. Where entities sit on different systems, consolidating data from multiple ERPs gives it a single base to work from. See the closing and audit hub for the full sequence.
