Post-Acquisition Finance Integration
The acquisition has closed. Is the data you just inherited actually reliable?
Not the deal terms. The data. Customer records, vendor files, the ledger. Right now you do not know, and in a few months nobody will be able to find out.
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The gap
Due diligence told you what you were buying. It did not tell you whether the data is trustworthy.
Sampled schedules and management-prepared numbers are what diligence runs on. That is appropriate for pricing a deal. It is not the same as verifying a record set.
The day you close, your team owns the real thing: every customer record, every vendor file, every ledger entry. Nobody has checked all of it yet.
Closing the deal does not mean the data is integration-ready. Those are two different milestones, and the gap between them is exactly where problems hide, until they are merged into your systems and impossible to trace back.
What to check first
Seven checks, and what each one is hiding.
1
Trial balance and general ledger
Unsupported balances, suspense accounts, and anything that has not moved in twelve months or more. These survive because no one owned them, and they transfer to you intact.
2
AR and AP aging, separately from the headline
A clean total can still be hiding fifteen percent sitting over ninety days. The headline receivables figure is the number that gets presented. The aging profile is the number that matters.
3
Intercompany balances against the counterparty’s books
Reconciled against the other side’s ledger, not just the target’s. A balance that agrees with itself proves nothing. Mismatches here surface at your first consolidation, not before.
4
Bank access actually transferred
Confirm it, do not read it. Mandates and signatories are frequently documented as changed while the operative access still sits with people who no longer work for you.
5
Statutory accounts against management accounts
Year-end adjustments that never made it back into the monthly numbers you were shown during the deal. The two sets can differ materially and both be filed correctly.
6
Local chart of accounts mapped to Group’s
Before your first reporting deadline, not after it. Mapping done under deadline pressure is where classification errors enter the group numbers and stay there.
7
The close calendar
What the acquired team can actually deliver, against what Group needs. This is a capacity question, and it is usually answered too late.
The practical problem
This lands on a Group Controller who is already running business-as-usual close.
They are not short on competence. They are short on hours.
Which is exactly why data problems from an acquisition do not get caught in month one. They get caught in month four, when a customer disputes an invoice or a payment goes out twice, and by then it is tangled into your own systems and nobody can trace the error back to where it came from.
The timing matters more than who does it. The first ninety days are the easiest window to catch a data problem, and the hardest time to find one once everything is merged. Whether your team builds this internally or brings in outside help, that window does not reopen.
If you would rather not build it from scratch
Our Acquisition Data Check does exactly this.
Fixed scope, running alongside your finance team rather than replacing it, with most engagements closing in two to three weeks once we have your data. You get a discrepancy report and one clean, merged dataset.
See exactly what the Acquisition Data Check covers, including the process, what we need from you, and the timeline.
Not sure where to start? We offer a free face-to-face consultation to help you understand what to check, where the risks might be, and what makes sense for your situation. No scope required in advance.
Related reading
More on the first months after a deal.
Our first 100 days finance integration roadmap sets out the wider sequence. What a CFO should review after an acquisition covers what sits beyond the data itself, and accounts receivable review after an acquisition goes deeper on check two.
For the pre-deal side of the process, see audit and due diligence.
Common questions
What acquirers ask at this stage.
What is post-acquisition finance integration?
The work of making a newly acquired company’s finance records reliable and reportable under new ownership. It starts at closing, and the first task is establishing whether the data you inherited can be trusted before it is merged into your systems.
Why is due diligence not enough?
Diligence runs on sampled schedules and management-prepared numbers, which is right for pricing a deal. It does not verify the full record set. At close you own every record, and none of them have been checked in full.
When should these checks happen?
Within the first ninety days, and before the acquired company’s data is merged into your systems. Once records are combined, a discrepancy can no longer be traced back to which side it came from.
Why do these problems surface so late?
Because the person responsible is usually a Group Controller already running business-as-usual close for the rest of the group. It is a capacity constraint, not a competence one, which is why issues tend to appear in month four rather than month one.
Do you take over from our finance team?
No. We work alongside your existing team for a fixed, time-boxed engagement. Your team keeps control of the data and the systems.
What if we are not sure what we need yet?
We offer a free face-to-face consultation to work through what to check, where the risks are likely to sit, and what makes sense for your situation. You do not need a defined scope before that conversation.
Recently closed a deal?
Find out what to check, before it is all merged.
Tell us where the deal stands. We will walk through what to check first and what makes sense for your situation, at no cost.
Book a free consultation