Multi-entity accounting software: Business Central vs Odoo

Multi-entity accounting software keeps a separate set of books per legal entity and produces consolidated statements. Business Central and Odoo 19 both do this for a US group of two to six companies, and both still need a reviewed elimination each month. Business Central Essentials is USD 80 per user per month paid yearly, with no extra license per company inside the included environment, as of October 2026. Odoo Standard is USD 31.10 per user per month on the discounted yearly rate and does not include multi-company; Custom, which does, is USD 61.00 on that rate. The plan section covers the 12-month discount window and the yearly versus monthly upsell.

How legal entities, ownership, and the close fit together is covered in our guide to multi-entity ERP consolidation. This page is the buying comparison: what each product posts, what a person still does at month-end, and what the license does when you add a company.

What to require from multi-entity accounting software

Separate company files and one set of consolidated financials are different jobs. Fit Small Business puts the buying question this way: "The best multicompany accounting software for your business depends on whether you need to keep separate books for multiple organizations or consolidate those organizations into a single set of financial statements." A 30 to 100 person group with two to six legal entities almost always needs both. The subsidiaries file their own returns. The parent, the bank, and the auditor want one set of statements with intercompany balances removed.

Accounting Seed describes the close many controllers still run: "Without a dedicated platform, finance teams often export trial balances, map charts of accounts, reconcile intercompany balances, calculate eliminations, translate currencies, and build consolidated statements in Excel." That list is the requirements list. Any product you shortlist has to cover each of those jobs inside the ledger, with a named person still responsible for the elimination review.

For this size of group, require six things in the demo and in the statement of work:

1. A separate chart, currency, and fiscal calendar per legal entity, plus a documented way to map those accounts into the consolidation.
2. Intercompany sales, purchases, and journals that create the other side in the receiving company, with a rule for who posts it.
3. An elimination path a controller can preview before it hits the consolidated numbers.
4. A stated translation method for income statement accounts, balance sheet accounts, and equity.
5. A way to include a partly owned company at a percentage, or a written statement that the percent will be handled outside the product.
6. User access that can be limited to one entity, and a group view for the controller.

In that same Fit Small Business roundup, updated 25 May 2026, Wave keeps separate companies and does not produce a consolidated statement, including across currencies. SoftwareConnect describes QuickBooks Online as one company per subscription. Those products can keep books. They are a weak fit once intercompany volume and a consolidated statement are the monthly job.

Where Business Central and Odoo 19 differ

Read this against your own entities. Prices are US list prices as of October 2026, from the Business Central pricing page and the Odoo pricing page. The 300-company figure is an environment limit on Microsoft's operational limits page, documented as taking effect in 2023 wave 1.

• Where the books live (Business Central: Companies in an environment. One environment allows 300 companies. Another environment is bought through a CSP. · Odoo 19: Companies in one database. Have Odoo show the company list on the database you will run.)
• Chart of accounts (Business Central: Different charts are allowed. Blank consolidation accounts mean the same account number. · Odoo 19: Each company has a chart. Accounts can be shared. Merging accounts is optional.)
• Fiscal year (Business Central: Source companies may use different fiscal years. · Odoo 19: For branches, the branch shares the parent fiscal period. That is a branch rule. Ask to see two legal-entity calendars on your data.)
• Intercompany documents (Business Central: Sales invoices become purchase invoices. The intercompany journal converts at the current rate and does not carry currency. Auto-accept does not post. · Odoo 19: Can create vendor bills, sales orders, and purchase orders, and can sync stock. Products must be shared.)
• Eliminations (Business Central: Manual: find repeated transactions, enter a general journal, preview, then post. · Odoo 19: Consolidation adjustment journals live on a multi-ledger. The usual report opens on the statutory ledger.)
• Currency translation (Business Central: You choose the method on each account. · Odoo 19: Equity uses the historical rate, profit and loss uses the weighted average, other balance sheet accounts use the closing rate.)
• Partial ownership (Business Central: Consolidation % on the business unit. The docs use 70 percent of a 100 invoice. · Odoo 19: Have the bidder post a partial subsidiary on your numbers.)
• License and companies (Business Central: No per-company fee inside the included production environment. Essentials is USD 80 per user per month, paid yearly. · Odoo 19: Standard at USD 31.10 does not include multi-company. Custom at USD 61.00 does. Both are discounted yearly rates per user per month.)

Both products can keep a distinct chart for each company. Business Central is the fit when companies sit in more than one environment, or when you need Consolidation % on the business unit. Different fiscal years are a documented Business Central capability for source companies. On Odoo, a branch shares the parent fiscal period, which is a branch rule, so ask to see two legal-entity calendars on your data. Odoo is the fit when every legal entity can live in one database, share products, and follow translation rules that are fixed by account type. In both products the elimination is a journal a person reviews. Microsoft Learn specifies the Business Central sequence: find the repeated amounts, enter the journal, preview, then post. Accounting Seed states a general line about eliminations: "Eliminations run through a human-reviewed journal entry rather than a fully automated engine."

How Business Central runs companies and intercompany

Business Central consolidation copies general ledger entries from two or more companies into a consolidation company. Those source companies can sit in different environments, use different charts of accounts, run different fiscal years, and keep different currencies. You can also bring in a percentage of a company's financial information. A group with two to six entities is far under the 300-company environment cap. The cap matters when someone proposes a company per warehouse, per project, or per state inside the same environment. Environments already over 300 are supposed to be split.

Essentials and Premium include one production environment and three sandbox environments, per Microsoft's environment guide. An extra production environment is bought through a CSP partner. Each one adds three sandboxes and 4 GB of tenant-wide database capacity. Microsoft does not publish that add-on price on the pricing page. Ask the CSP for the figure before you treat a second environment as a rounding error. Companies in another environment can still be consolidated.

Intercompany posting sends sales documents, purchase documents, and general journals between partners. Partners may use different charts of accounts, dimensions, item numbers, currencies, and countries. You keep one shared intercompany chart of accounts and, if you use them, shared intercompany dimensions, mapped in both directions, as described in the intercompany setup. A sales invoice sent through intercompany becomes a purchase invoice in the receiving company. Purchase invoices are not submitted to partners through intercompany, so a purchase-only flow needs another path. The intercompany general journal converts amounts to local currency at the current exchange rate, and the journal itself does not carry currencies.

Partners in another tenant need an Azure app registration, a client secret, and connection details. Auto-accept creates the journal lines in the receiving company and does not post them. Someone in that company still reviews and posts. That is a control. It is also a line that stays on the close checklist.

On the chart, consolidation setup says that a business unit whose consolidation debit account and consolidation credit account fields are left blank is consolidated on the assumption that each source account maps to the same number in the consolidation company. An account you want left out of the group totals can be marked Exclude from Consolidation. Matching numbers across entities make the first consolidation faster. Different numbers are allowed, and they have to be mapped before the first close you intend to rely on.

Consolidation and intercompany are in the base product. An add-on is a choice when you want automation those steps do not perform, such as a suggested elimination nobody has to find by hand. It is not a second license you must buy before several companies can post.

How Odoo 19 separates companies, branches, and intercompany

Odoo 19 accounting keeps multiple companies in one database. Each company has its own chart of accounts, and accounts can be shared so consolidation reports have a common list. A user can view records and reports for several companies at once, and can work on only one company's accounting at a time. A controller booking an entry for entity B switches company first, then posts.

The country you pick when you create a company installs that country's fiscal localization and a local chart, and the chart of accounts documentation says the fiscal localization cannot be changed after a journal entry is posted. Set the country, the chart, and the localization before anyone posts an invoice you need to keep. A wrong country becomes a migration.

Branches are a different object from legal entities. Adding a branch turns on multi-company functions, but the branch shares the parent chart of accounts, the main currency, the taxes, and the fiscal period. The parent can see branch reports. The branch sees only its own data. Parent reporting of branches is a centralized view of the profit and loss or the balance sheet. Legal-entity consolidation uses account mapping, a multi-ledger, and horizontal groups. If the units are divisions of one corporation, branches may match the legal structure. If they are separate legal entities with their own tax IDs, use companies and the consolidation setup, and have the demo labeled that way.

Multi-company rules for intercompany, inside one database, can automatically create vendor bills, sales orders, and purchase orders, and can synchronize stock moves. Products must be shared across the companies that trade. Warehouses are not created automatically for companies you add after the initial database setup, so a new operating company needs its warehouses, fiscal positions, and localization before you promise the warehouse team a date. Business Central can reach a company in another environment. Odoo 19 multi-company is documented inside one database. If a sister company must stay on its own database, have that design shown on your data before you assume these rules still apply.

Enabling multi-company on a Standard database triggers an upsell to Custom. That upsell does not apply to the One-App Free plan. On a yearly or multi-year contract, the upsell order has a 30-day limit. On a monthly contract, the database switches to Custom and the new rate applies on the next bill. The pricing page adds the plan boundary: One App Free allows multiple companies, and installing Studio or adding companies while you upgrade from One App Free to a paid plan switches the database to Custom. Custom is the plan described for managing multiple companies on one database. For a paid database that must run two or more legal entities, budget Custom before the first invoice.

What a three-entity month-end still asks someone to do

Assume three legal entities. Two share a base currency and one does not. Each month, entity A sells finished goods to entity B, and entity A charges entity C a management fee. Ownership of all three is 100 percent. The steps below are the vendor procedures applied to that pattern.

In Business Central the month has two layers. During the month, entity A sends the sales invoices through intercompany. Entity B and entity C each receive a purchase invoice that someone still reviews and posts. On the intercompany general journal, auto-accept creates the lines in the receiving company, and a person there posts them. At close, someone runs consolidation so the three general ledgers land in the consolidation company, with the foreign entity translated by the method on each account. Eliminations stay manual, in this order:

1. Find the repeated intercompany amounts. The sale in A and the purchase in B should match in the consolidation currency. The management fee should match the expense in C. Anything that does not match is a reconciliation item, and it waits.
2. Enter general journal lines in the consolidation company for the pairs that match: intercompany revenue against intercompany expense, and intercompany receivable against intercompany payable.
3. Run the G/L Consolidation Eliminations report and read the preview before you post.
4. Post the adjusting transactions.
5. Read the Consolidated Trial Balance. It shows each account's totals by business unit, the eliminations for the consolidation company's fiscal year, and the total after eliminations. With four business units or fewer, Consolidated Trial Balance (4) is also available. Three subsidiaries sit inside that range.

The consolidation run does not post those eliminations for you. The person who used to build the Excel workbook now works inside Business Central, with a preview report. The workbook shrinks once the map, the intercompany pairs, and the rates stay stable enough that the preview is a check.

In Odoo 19 the in-month layer is the intercompany rules: a confirmed sale in A can create the purchase side in B, and stock moves can sync, when the products are shared and the warehouses exist. At close, legal-entity consolidation still needs a person:

1. Confirm account mapping, or merge accounts where you have decided the numbers should be one list. Mapping carries charts that differ. Merging is optional.
2. Post consolidation adjustment journals to the multi-ledger that holds those adjustments. That ledger is separate from the day-to-day journals of each company.
3. Open the balance sheet and profit and loss with horizontal groups so each company is a column and the group is the total.
4. Switch the report from the default statutory view to the multi-ledger that includes every consolidation adjustment. Opened the usual way, the report uses the company's regular ledger, including that company's own consolidation adjustment, and leaves the other companies' adjustments out.
5. Check translation. Equity uses the historical rate. Profit and loss accounts, including appropriation accounts, use the weighted average rate. Other balance sheet accounts use the closing rate. The rates are those of the company currently selected, so the person running the report has to know which company is selected.

For this three-entity pattern, both products remove the export of three trial balances into a blank workbook. Both leave a reviewed journal, a mapping choice, and a report the controller must open in the consolidation view on purpose. Skipping the preview, or leaving Odoo on the statutory ledger, publishes the same close you already run, under a new menu name.

How each product translates a foreign entity

Neither documentation set is a memo on ASC 830. What you can hold a bidder to is the method on the screen. Put one income account, one balance sheet account, and retained earnings in the demo, with one subsidiary in a second currency, and match the result to the method below.

Business Central stores the method on the account. Average Rate (Manual) is the method described as typical for income statement accounts. Closing Rate is the method described for balance sheet accounts. Historical Rate is available. Composite Rate is described as typical for retained earnings. Equity Rate posts the differences to separate general ledger accounts. The word Manual on Average Rate means someone supplies that rate. Ask where a weighted average would be entered and who updates it. A partly owned company consolidates at the Consolidation % on the business unit card. Microsoft's example is 70 percent ownership: a 100 invoice contributes 70.

When Odoo consolidates companies in different currencies, equity accounts use the historical rate, profit and loss accounts (including appropriation accounts) use the weighted average rate, and other balance sheet accounts use the closing rate. Day-to-day foreign currency is a different job from translating a whole subsidiary. The multi-currency page (Odoo 18) says every transaction is stored in the company currency and in the foreign-currency amount. After reconciliation, exchange differences post to a gain account, a loss account, and a dedicated journal. Rates can be typed in, or updated daily, weekly, or monthly from a selected web service.

Business Central gives you a choice per account, including an equity method that posts the difference to its own accounts. Odoo gives you historical, weighted average, and closing, and you need the right company selected when you read the rates. If a subsidiary's functional currency is not its local currency, have that case posted on a copy of your chart before you sign. The pages above do not walk through that exception.

What the licenses cost when the group adds a company

Business Central does not multiply the subscription by the number of companies inside the included production environment. You pay for users. Odoo Standard stays on its own price until you turn on multi-company, and then the plan changes. As of October 2026:

• Business Central Essentials (List price: USD 80 per user per month, paid yearly · What it means for several entities: Full user. Companies in the environment do not add a company fee.)
• Business Central Premium (List price: USD 110 per user per month, paid yearly · What it means for several entities: Full user on the wider license. Same company treatment.)
• Business Central Team Members (List price: USD 8 per user per month, paid yearly · What it means for several entities: Limited to read, approve, and update selected information.)
• Odoo Standard, yearly discount (List price: USD 31.10 per user per month · What it means for several entities: Discount valid 12 months for the initial users ordered. Multi-company is not included.)
• Odoo Standard, monthly (List price: USD 38.90 per user per month · What it means for several entities: Same plan limit. Enabling multi-company upsells to Custom.)
• Odoo Custom, yearly discount (List price: USD 61.00 per user per month · What it means for several entities: Discount valid 12 months for the initial users ordered. Includes multi-company.)
• Odoo Custom, monthly (List price: USD 76.20 per user per month · What it means for several entities: Includes multi-company. Odoo.sh hosting is extra.)

Those Business Central rows are the US list. Odoo rows are the US pricing page. The yearly Odoo discount applies to the initial users for 12 months. Use it for year-one math, and ask what those users pay in month 13 before year two goes into a board paper.

Assume 12 people need a full finance and operations login, and 8 people only approve or look up orders. On Business Central, paid yearly at the October 2026 US list, 12 Essentials users cost 12 times USD 80 times 12 months, which is USD 11,520 a year. Eight Team Members cost 8 times USD 8 times 12, which is USD 768 a year. The license total is USD 12,288 for the year, whether those people work across two companies or six, as long as the companies stay in the included production environment. The person who maps accounts and posts the elimination journal needs a full user. Team Members are limited to read, approve, and update selected information.

The same 12 full users on Odoo Custom, at the discounted yearly rate, cost 12 times USD 61 times 12 months, which is USD 8,784 in the discount year. Standard would be 12 times USD 31.10 times 12, which is USD 4,478.40, and it does not include multi-company. The jump from Standard to Custom on this headcount is USD 4,305.60 in the discount year. Light users are listed next to Custom as "Light User at US$ 8.90", the line does not say per month, and they need an advisor quote. They are limited to self-service tasks such as expenses and shop-floor work. Do not plan the controller's login as a light user.

Canadian Business Central list prices are a different card. As of October 2026, on the Canada pricing page, Essentials is CAD 108.50 per user per month, paid yearly, plus applicable tax, Premium is CAD 149.20, and Team Members are CAD 10.90. This page does not convert the US Odoo prices into Canadian dollars. If the contracting entity is Canadian, take the Odoo quote in the currency they bill.

What to put in the statement of work and the demo

Odoo does not publish a price per extra legal entity. Success Packs are the published services price, and implementation is excluded from the subscription. For a new customer the first pack is 15 percent off: Starter is 4 hours at USD 493, Basic is 25 hours at USD 3,060, Standard is 50 hours at USD 5,950, Custom is 100 hours at USD 10,625, and Pro is 200 hours at USD 21,250. Returning-customer prices on the same page are USD 580, USD 3,600, USD 7,000, USD 12,500, and USD 25,000. Odoo says companies under 50 employees usually buy implementation from Odoo through Success Packs, and companies over 50 employees usually use a partner. The estimator lists Accounting Consolidation under a Finance checkbox, and Odoo states that 80 percent of projects within that estimator scope go to production in 200 hours or less. That 200-hour line is the estimator scope, not hours per company you add later.

Microsoft prices Business Central per user, so an added company is a setup task, not a license SKU. The work is the chart map, the intercompany setup, the rates, the opening balances, and training the person who posts. Ask each bidder to price those as their own lines: one line for the consolidation company and the account map, one line per additional legal entity for localization, opening balances, and warehouses or locations, and one line for intercompany document rules. A single combined fee hides which entity is harder than the others.

Our target for a first usable phase is 8 to 12 weeks. For a group this size, that phase is the charts, intercompany for the pairs that trade every month, and one consolidation the controller can preview. Later entities and the long tail of dimensions wait. A Business Central implementation scopes those phases against the environment, the companies, and the licenses above. An Odoo implementation scopes the same close on one database, including the Custom plan and companies added after go-live. Company, branch, and access choices are spelled out in our Odoo multi-company setup guide.

In the demo, use a copy of your chart and three documents from last month. Score each item:

1. Create the third entity in the session. In Odoo, confirm the fiscal localization and whether a warehouse appeared. In Business Central, confirm the company landed in the current environment and whether its accounts map by number or by a filled consolidation account.
2. Send one intercompany sales invoice. Show the purchase invoice on the other side, the currency conversion, and the user who still has to post. In Business Central, show that auto-accept stopped short of posting. In Odoo, show that the product was shared.
3. Post one mismatched intercompany amount and one matching pair. Eliminate only the match. Show the preview, then the consolidated total.
4. Translate one revenue account and one balance sheet account from the foreign entity. Read the rate source out loud.
5. If you own any entity at less than 100 percent, enter the percentage and show the reduced total. On Business Central that field is Consolidation %. On Odoo, require the bidder to show the method on your numbers.
6. Open the consolidated report the way a new staff accountant would. On Odoo, confirm you can see the difference between the statutory ledger and the multi-ledger. On Business Central, open Consolidated Trial Balance and point at the elimination column.
7. Sign in as a user who should see only one entity, then as the controller who should see the group.

A bidder who only shows a single company, or who finishes by exporting to Excel, has not shown the product you would close on. ERP implementation services are how we run that demo on your entities and phase the work so the first close you rely on is the one in the system.

How Flectic can help

Flectic implements Dynamics 365 Business Central for companies on Microsoft 365 that run several legal entities and need intercompany and consolidated reporting. We work alongside your team through the first month-end close on the new system. Book a free discovery call with Flectic, and check the Dynamics 365 implementation scope against your entity count.

Sources

Consolidate data from multiple companies, Microsoft Learn, October 2026

Set up company consolidation, Microsoft Learn, October 2026

Manage intercompany transactions, Microsoft Learn, October 2026

Set up intercompany transaction posting, Microsoft Learn, October 2026

Managing Production and Sandbox Environments, Microsoft Learn, October 2026

Operation Limits in Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft Learn, October 2026

Dynamics 365 Business Central pricing (US), Microsoft, October 2026

Dynamics 365 Business Central pricing (Canada), Microsoft, October 2026

Multi-company, Odoo 19.0 documentation, October 2026

Accounting and Invoicing, Odoo 19.0 documentation, October 2026

Consolidation, Odoo 19.0 documentation, October 2026

Chart of accounts, Odoo 19.0 documentation, October 2026

Multi-currency, Odoo 18.0 documentation, October 2026

Odoo pricing, Odoo, October 2026

Odoo Success Packs, Odoo, October 2026

Best Multi-Entity Accounting Software Platforms in 2026, Accounting Seed, September 2026

Best Multicompany Accounting Software, Fit Small Business, May 2026

Best Accounting Software for Multiple Businesses in 2026, SoftwareConnect, 2026