One business becomes two. A property goes into a trust. A holding company sits above a trading company, a second trading company is bought, a family trust owns the lot. Before long the owner has a group of entities, each with its own tax return, its own bank account and its own loans to the others, and nobody with a clear picture of the whole. We act for groups like this across Brisbane and south-east Queensland, and the first thing we do is draw the map.
Groups rarely get designed. They accumulate. Each new entity solved a problem at the time: protecting the family home, holding a property, bringing in a partner, buying a competitor, separating a risky division. Each decision was sensible on its own. Together they produce a structure with a dozen moving parts and a growing list of ways to get it wrong.
The symptoms are familiar. Money moves between entities to cover cash shortfalls and nobody documents the loan. One company pays expenses for another. Trust distributions are decided in a rush before 30 June. The group's real profit is a mystery because each entity's accounts tell only part of the story. The accountant lodges eight returns and the owner still does not know how the business is going.
Our role is to make the group legible: one chart that shows who owns what, one set of group accounts that shows what the whole earns, and one set of rules for how money moves between the parts.
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Group reporting that shows the whole picture
Multi-entity groups need two kinds of numbers. Each entity needs its own accounts for tax and compliance. The owner needs a consolidated view that eliminates the intercompany noise and shows what the group actually makes, owns and owes. Without the second, decisions get made on the first, and the first is misleading by design.
We build group reporting in Xero with a consolidation layer on top: profit by entity and for the group, intercompany balances reconciled every month, debt and asset positions across the structure, and cash held in each entity against what each entity needs. For groups with a board or outside shareholders, this becomes the monthly board pack.
Greg built this firm by acquiring other practices, and runs a group himself. The reporting we recommend is the reporting he uses.
Consolidated monthly management accounts across all entities
Intercompany loan ledgers reconciled and documented
Entity-level accounts and tax returns prepared from the same data
Group cash position and funding needs by entity
Division 7A compliance for company loans to shareholders and trusts
Trust distribution planning before year end, with resolutions prepared
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Intercompany loans, Division 7A and the traps between entities
The most expensive mistakes in a group happen in the gaps between entities. A company lends to a trust or a shareholder and the loan is not put on complying terms, so the ATO treats it as a dividend. A trust distributes to a company to cap the tax rate, but the cash never moves and an unpaid present entitlement builds up with its own consequences. Expenses are paid from the wrong entity and deductions are lost.
We put the group on rails. Every intercompany balance has a loan agreement, a rate and a repayment plan where the law requires one. Trust distributions are planned in May and June against the actual income of the year, with resolutions signed before 30 June. Payments between entities are coded consistently so the books stay reconciled and the audit trail is clean.
The aim is not just compliance. A group that runs cleanly is worth more to a buyer, easier to finance and far cheaper to unwind or restructure when the owner's plans change.
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Designing and redesigning the structure
Sometimes the right answer is fewer entities, not more. A group that grew by accident can often be simplified: dormant companies deregistered, overlapping trusts merged, a holding company inserted so that trading subsidiaries can be sold individually. Sometimes the right answer is an additional entity, to quarantine a new venture or hold a property away from the operating risk.
We review the group against the owner's goals: asset protection, tax efficiency, bringing in investors or successors, and an eventual exit. Then we recommend the structure that serves those goals with the fewest moving parts, and plan the transition using the rollovers and concessions available so that the reorganisation does not itself create a tax bill.
Our trusts and companies page explains the building blocks. This page is about how they fit together.
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Property, investments and the family in the group
Many south-east Queensland groups mix a trading business with property and investments: the premises owned by a trust and leased to the company, a self-managed super fund that holds commercial property, shares and a holiday house in a family trust. Each has its own tax rules and each interacts with the others through rent, loans and distributions.
We handle the whole group under one roof, including the SMSF through our SMSF accounting service, so that lease terms, loan arrangements and distributions are set with the full picture in mind. Succession, where the next generation steps into the group, is planned early rather than forced by events.
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Groups we act for
Our group clients include trades and construction businesses with separate plant and property entities, medical and allied health practices with service entities, real estate agencies with rent rolls held separately, franchisees with several sites, and families with a mix of businesses and investments. The three practices under our own roof, Acquire, VKS Accounting and Veal & Prasad, mean the group has specialists for each part.
We act for groups from our Victoria Point and Jimboomba offices and online. If your structure has grown to the point where you are not sure what it costs or what it is for, a strategy call is the place to start.
There is no fixed number. The test is whether each entity still earns its place: protecting an asset, separating a risk, enabling a sale or saving tax that justifies its running cost. Entities that no longer do any of those should be wound up. A review every few years usually finds at least one.
What is Division 7A and why does it matter for groups?
Division 7A is the part of the tax law that treats certain loans and payments from a private company to its shareholders or their associates, including trusts, as unfranked dividends unless they are on complying terms. In a group, money moves between entities constantly, so without documentation and minimum repayments, large unexpected tax bills can arise. We manage this as part of the monthly work.
Can you consolidate accounts across different entities in Xero?
Yes. Each entity keeps its own Xero file for compliance and we build a consolidated view on top, eliminating intercompany transactions so the group's true position is visible. Reporting tools attached to Xero handle this without a separate ERP system.
Do I need a holding company?
Often, if you plan to sell a trading business, bring in investors at the operating level, or quarantine retained profits from trading risk. A holding company can also simplify ownership where a family trust would otherwise hold shares in several companies. Whether it suits your group depends on the facts, and inserting one may be possible without tax under the rollover rules.
How do you plan trust distributions?
Before 30 June we estimate each trust's income for the year, model the distribution options across beneficiaries including any corporate beneficiary, consider the cash consequences and the Division 7A position, then prepare the resolutions for signing before year end. The decision is made on numbers, not guesswork.
Can you take on a group that has been with several different accountants?
Yes, and it is common. We gather the files, build the group map, reconcile the intercompany balances and bring every entity onto the same process. The clean-up usually pays for itself through tax or risk that was being missed.
