How to Do Group Consolidation with Claude AI (Correctly)

Free Community (written walkthrough and the three prompts from this video): https://www.skool.com/ai-for-finance-... Claude for Finance Course & Business Inquiries: https://aiforfinancecircle.com/course https://aiforfinancecircle.com/ Connect LinkedIn:   / zain-ul-abideen-acca   A note on method This is the method I work with. It is not the only method and it is not the perfect one, because there is no perfect way to do anything in FP&A. Every group consolidates differently, and what works at one will need adapting at another. Take the parts that fit your organisation, change what does not, and ignore the rest. If you do it differently and it works, that is not a disagreement worth having. A note on the numbers All figures shown are dummy data for a fictional business. Nothing here belongs to a real company or a live consolidation. About me I am Zain, a practising CFO (FCCA) based in the UK and the founder of AI for Finance Circle. I build finance systems with AI and train finance teams on how to do the same, without the hype. About this video: A group consolidation with two accounting systems, two currencies and staff shared between entities can take two or three working days, and most of that time goes on mapping, matching intercompany and chasing a loan that does not agree. Here is how I consolidated a UK parent and its Dubai subsidiary with Claude in three prompts, to a standard I would sign, in under an hour. I break the job into three milestones and check the numbers at each one. Prompt one builds the model and stops before any elimination. Prompt two reconciles intercompany and stops before posting anything. Prompt three posts the corrections and produces the consolidated P&L and balance sheet in the CFO's format. Claude found four intercompany differences. Deciding what to do with them stayed with me. What you will learn The group structure and the four intercompany items every consolidation has to deal with What to put in the folder before you start: agreements, policies, trial balances, GL extracts, FX rates, the CFO's format How to write the first prompt so Claude builds the model but does not eliminate anything yet Reading the control sheet, the decisions log and the mapping gaps before you go further How to answer Claude's decisions and get an intercompany reconciliation that stops and waits What to do with the four intercompany differences, and why in real life the accountants repost first Posting the corrections and producing the consolidated P&L and balance sheet in the CFO's format Why every number in the model traces back to a trial balance Why breaking the job into milestones is what makes the output signable Chapters 00:00 The group P&L with every intercompany line at nil 00:46 The group structure and the four intercompany items 01:28 The files Claude gets before the first prompt 03:48 Prompt one: build the model, no eliminations yet 05:23 Reviewing the model: control sheet, decisions log, mapping gaps 07:17 Prompt two: answer the decisions and reconcile intercompany 07:57 Intercompany differences & How prompts help identify problems 09:38 Prompt three: post the corrections and produce the consolidated financials 10:27 The consolidated P&L and balance sheet, every number auditable 11:49 The secret of producing high level output from Claude AI #FPandA #CFO #AIforFinance #ClaudeAI #GroupConsolidation #ManagementReporting