The Monday question
The question an owner with three companies asks on a Monday is rarely "what was net income in June". It is closer to "which of these is making money, which one is eating cash, and can I cover payroll on Friday without moving money between them again". Each QuickBooks Online file answers a piece of that for one company. Nobody adds them up. Intuit's guidance is that each company needs its own subscription, and there is no consolidation inside the product, as we covered in whether QuickBooks Online can consolidate multiple companies.
So the owner opens three files, writes three bank balances on a notepad, and does the sum in their head. That works for cash on a good week. It does not work for profit, because the companies pay each other, and it does not work for "what changed", because nobody wrote last week's numbers down. A thread on the QuickBooks Community in March 2025 describes the grown-up version: someone consolidating 15 entities in Excel, monthly, by hand, asking for anything that handles eliminations and budget versus actual. Fifteen is unusual. Three is not, and the method is the same.
The transfer that hides a losing company
In April, the owner of a plumbing service company, a new-construction plumbing company and an LLC that owns the shop moved $38,000 from the service company to the construction company. The construction company had won a large job in the spring and needed cash for materials before the first draw came in. Another $27,500 followed in May and $19,000 in June, each one "temporary". The service company is the strong one. The bookkeeper coded the transfers as loans between the companies, which is correct.
By July the construction company's P&L shows a profit of $9,300 for the year. It looks fine. But $31,400 of its materials were bought on the service company's card and coded to the service company as job supplies, because that was easier than paying from the right account. Move those costs where they belong and the construction company is at a loss of $22,100, and the service company is $31,400 better off than its own P&L says. The owner has been reading two wrong numbers for six months, and the spreadsheet that adds them is also wrong, because the transfers between the companies never appear in either P&L at all.
We see this pattern a lot. The profitable company quietly funds the weak one, the funding is booked as a loan so it never touches profit, and costs drift toward whichever company has the card in the drawer. Nobody set out to do this. Three sets of books read one at a time produce it on their own.
The three numbers and where each comes from
Total cash is the sum of every operating, savings and payroll account across every company, less anything already committed in the next ten days: payroll, sales tax you collected for the state, loan payments due. In the example above, the three companies hold $253,450 on Monday morning, but $61,400 of payroll and $84,000 of construction supplier bills fall due before the next draw, so the number the owner should carry in their head is closer to $108,000.
An intercompany transaction is money or cost moving between two companies you own: rent to your own property LLC, a management fee, one company paying another's bill, or a loan between them. Each one is real in its own company's books. When you add the companies together it has to be removed, or rent is counted as income in one place and expense in another and the group's revenue is overstated. Intercompany transactions explained for owners walks through the four common kinds.
Profit by company after intercompany is each company's net income with those items stripped out, and with costs sitting in the company that actually incurred them. This is the number that answers "which business is losing money", and no single file can produce it, because each file only knows its own side of the transaction.
What changed is the comparison of those two numbers to last week and last month, with the three or four largest movements named. Cash down $41,000 is a fact. Cash down $41,000 because the construction company paid a $29,000 supplier bill and the service company's largest customer is 23 days late is something you can act on. Why net income doesn't match your bank balance covers the usual reasons the two move differently.
Signs the spreadsheet has already failed
The spreadsheet fails quietly. The bookkeeper recodes "Job supplies" to "Materials" in one file, the lookup returns zero, and nobody notices because zero looks like a quiet month. A fourth LLC is formed for a new location and is missing from the sheet for four months. The tab called "Consolidated" shows total revenue larger than the sum of every customer invoice across the three companies, which is the single clearest sign that rent or management fees are being counted twice.
A LiveFlow survey published in May 2026 found 78% of finance leaders still move data between systems through manual spreadsheet exports, and those are people whose job is finance. A QuickBooks roundup of financial literacy statistics puts it more bluntly for owners: 71% use accounting software, and 71% still use pen and paper or spreadsheets for some part of their finances. Owners build spreadsheets because the tools stop at the edge of one company.
A weekly and monthly rhythm
Most advice says to review your financials monthly with your accountant. For an owner with several companies that is about right for profit and far too slow for cash, because the transfer that hides a losing company happens between the monthly reviews, not during one. A March 2025 TD Bank survey by Wakefield Research of 250 small business owners found 36% assess their financial preparedness monthly and 29% quarterly, and 66% are the only person responsible for it. A June 2024 Xero survey of 1,021 businesses with 50 or fewer employees found 16% actively use an accountant or advisor. Whatever rhythm exists, most owners run it alone.
The weekly part takes about ten minutes and covers cash only: total across every company, the amount committed in the next ten days, the difference, and any transfer between companies since last week with a one-line reason. If a transfer happened and no reason is written down, that is the item to chase. A 13-week cash flow forecast is the longer version of the same habit.
The monthly part takes about an hour, once the bookkeeper has closed. It covers profit by company with intercompany removed, the three largest changes against the prior month, and the balance of every loan between your companies, because a due-from balance that only ever grows is a subsidy under a politer name. Read those loan balances every month even when nothing else has moved.
What this rhythm cannot do is tell you whether the weak company should exist, or whether the loan from the strong one will ever be repaid. Those are judgment calls. It also depends on a bookkeeper who closes each file within a few weeks of month end; if the books are six weeks behind, the monthly number is history rather than information.
Navigator handles the mechanics of this. It connects to each QuickBooks Online file read-only, refreshes daily, and sends a morning brief by email with cash by company and in total. You can ask, in the app or in a Slack or Teams thread, which company lost money last month, and the answer cites the entries behind it so you can open the one that looks wrong. Consolidated and per-entity views are on the base plan; intercompany elimination, which is what makes profit by company honest, is on the Pro plan. Details are at navigatorhq.ai.
Who does what
The bookkeeper closes each file, reconciles every bank account, and books every transfer between companies as a loan or a repayment with a memo saying which job or bill it covered. Ask for the close date and the reconciliation date of each file every month. Those two dates say more about the books than any report.
The CPA sets the rules once a year: how management fees are calculated, whether loans between companies carry interest, and how costs that serve two companies get split. Those are tax decisions and should be written down, or the bookkeeper will make a reasonable guess that differs from last year's reasonable guess.
You read the three numbers, ask about the transfers, and decide. Nobody can outsource that part. It takes the least time once the numbers arrive the same way every week with no spreadsheet to rebuild first.
Questions owners ask
How do I see total cash across all my businesses?
Add the balance of every bank account in every QuickBooks Online file, then subtract what is committed in the next ten days: payroll, sales tax collected, loan payments. QuickBooks cannot do the first step across files; you do it by hand, in a spreadsheet, or with a read-only tool that reads each file. The subtraction is the step most owners skip.
How do I know which of my companies is losing money?
Take each company's net income and remove intercompany items: rent or fees paid to your other companies, and costs one company paid on another's behalf. Then check the loans between companies. A company that shows a profit but has borrowed from a sibling every month this year is usually the one losing money.
Should each business have its own bank account?
Yes, one per legal entity at minimum. One shared account for two LLCs means every transaction has to be split by hand, the reconciliation is against the books rather than the bank, and a lender or the IRS will treat the entities as one. Separate accounts also make transfers between companies visible, which is the point.
How often should I review the numbers across all my companies?
Cash weekly, in about ten minutes: total across all companies, what is committed in the next ten days, and any transfer between companies with its reason. Profit by company monthly, after the bookkeeper closes, with intercompany removed and the largest changes named. Monthly alone misses the transfers that hide a losing company.
Related
If you have never seen your companies added together, start with whether QuickBooks Online can consolidate multiple companies. The weekly cash habit grows into a 13-week cash flow forecast once it is steady. And if you are tempted to paste three P&Ls into a chatbot and ask which company is losing money, read first about why ChatGPT gives different answers to the same question.
If you would rather have total cash and profit by company arrive by email tomorrow morning, the trial connects to each QuickBooks file in two clicks and needs no card: navigatorhq.ai.
Published . Last updated . Reviewed by a CFO on the Navigator team.