Using Consolidations in Finale Inventory
Finale Inventory strongly recommends using Consolidations for companies with eCommerce sales.
What Are Consolidations?
Consolidations are summarized journal entries that automatically combine all COGS and Income ledger entries for a given day, week, or month by sales channel. Each consolidation includes a detailed list of the sales order shipments that contributed to it. This feature is not enabled by default and must be configured in Application Settings.
Why Use Consolidations?
Finale Inventory creates detailed ledger entries, often multiple per order line item. For high-volume sales, this can result in thousands of ledger entries for Assets, COGS, Income, and Sales Clearing. While Finale handles this volume internally, syncing so many entries to QuickBooks Online can be overwhelming. Consolidations dramatically reduce the number of entries sent to QuickBooks Online, simplifying reporting and synchronization.
How Consolidations Work
Once enabled, Finale automatically summarizes all transactions for each sales source into two journal entries per frequency (Daily, Weekly, or Monthly):
Inventory & COGs Consolidation
Income & Sales Clearing Consolidation
Setting Options
Do not consolidate Sales: Does exactly as the title suggests. This is the default setting where no consolidation is created.
Consolidate Sales: This setting creates a consolidation, but it does not post it. This require the user to manually review and post the consolidated transaction.
Consolidate & Post Sales: This setting is the most popular. It creates and posts the consolidation, automating the process with no manual work needed.
The next set of settings that appear to your right will be the frequency settings. You will want to configure if you want consolidations to be grouped by day, week, or month.
How to See Consolidations After Setting Configuration
Navigate to your Consolidation section by using the accounting drop-down menu at the top of your screen. The consolidation screen, by default, will show you all transactions still in the draft state, meaning not posted or synced to QuickBooks Online. You can always manipulate the filters to see other transactions.
Note: Only posted consolidations will sync from Descartes Finale to QuickBooks Online.
By clicking on an individual consolidation, you can see the actual post information and see the associated sale shipments in the transaction list.
Important Notes
Even if income from a sales source is not synced to QuickBooks Online, Consolidations are still created in Finale’s general ledger.
Draft consolidations must be posted; unposted drafts prevent accurate Income and COGS reporting.
Consolidations operate on a specific frequency. Posting a draft early will generate additional drafts to cover the remaining period.
Do not enable consolidations for sales sources where invoices need to sync to QuickBooks Online. Consolidating a sales source with invoices will prevent those invoices from syncing. If consolidation was enabled for such a source, you must disable it and cancel existing drafts to allow invoice syncing.
Summary
Consolidations simplify ledger management, reduce the number of entries pushed to QuickBooks Online, and make reporting easier — but must be configured carefully based on your sales workflow.