One system for every country or one system per country

A shared system gives the CFO one chart of accounts, one customer list and one consolidated view, with intercompany balances matched in the same place. New reports reach every region together.

With separate systems, each country closes its own books and sends a file, and someone in head office rebuilds the consolidation in a spreadsheet, mapping accounts by hand. It works until a mapping changes. Nobody tells the person holding the workbook.

Ask how many days the group close takes now, and ask who does the mapping and who checks it afterwards when the currency rates move.

Some countries restrict where records are stored. A single global system can still respect that if the vendor lets you place each entity’s data in a chosen region. Then separation is the lawful route.

Rate changes favour sharing. A tax change is loaded once as a dated rule in the relevant regional profile, and every invoice after that date uses it. Across separate systems, each team repeats the update, and some forget until a customer complains about the wrong rate on an invoice.

Languages work either way, provided the product handles right-to-left text, accented characters and long German words on printed documents without cutting them off.

One system means one upgrade plan. Everyone moves together. That is simple to support, but it needs a calendar that respects busy seasons, since a freeze in the Gulf during Ramadan can collide with a quarter-end elsewhere.

Separate systems let each country upgrade when it suits its own calendar, which feels like freedom to the local team. The price is drift. After two years, the German system and the Brazilian one are different products, and a fix built for one must be rebuilt for the other.

Local operators usually want freedom to add fields and reports, and regional profiles can give them that freedom inside limits that head office has agreed in writing.

Take a franchisor with outlets in Spain, Mexico and Singapore, selling under one brand, where head office needs royalty reports, one brand template and one price list. Each franchisee needs local tax, its own language, a receipt format that the local authority accepts and the freedom to run a promotion.

One core system with regional profiles handles this well, because royalties roll up automatically while each profile carries its own tax rules, templates and number formats. Franchisees see only their own outlet.

A separate system per franchisee would hand them full control but leave head office chasing monthly exports and unable to compare outlets. Control and comparison pull apart.

List the legal limits first, such as data residency, local audit software and mandatory local providers, and where the law forces a split, split. Where it does not, favour one system, and test the profile model against the country with the strictest tax rules and the most awkward language.

Then count the cost of staying apart. Add the hours spent on consolidation, duplicate rate updates and fixes made twice, which finance rarely has written down, so ask each controller to sketch one typical week.

Bring those numbers and the legal limits to a single meeting with your operations heads, and decide country by country, not for the whole group at once. Write the decision on the worksheet.