Multicompany Setup Overview

The Multicompany feature makes it possible to track data for multiple legal entities using a single database and complete and report on intercompany transactions, including intercompany billings. Use Organization Setup to enable this feature.

Before you make any Multicompany setup decisions, read "Multicompany Concepts" in the Concepts section of the online help. This section contains important information that you must consider to make good setup decisions.

You Cannot "Undo" the Multicompany Decision

Before you enable the Multicompany feature, Deltek strongly recommends that you back up your existing Vision database. When you enable Vision Multicompany, it makes substantial, permanent changes to your database structure. The only way to return your Vision database to its pre-Multicompany state is to restore from the backup you created.

Review Your Existing Organization Structure

Before you set up the Multicompany feature, you should look at your existing corporate structure and strategize about how to represent it in Vision.

Consider the following limits:

• You may have up to five organization levels.

• Your firm's full organization code cannot exceed 14 characters, including both subcodes and delimiters.

Enable Multicompany and Set Up the Initial Company

When you enable the Multicompany feature, you also create the initial company in your organizational structure. The organization code for this company becomes level one of your organization structure. Any existing organization codes are "pushed down" one level to accommodate the company code.

• If you have a single Vision database, all data in it belongs to the initial company.

• If you have more than one Vision database, all data in the database you select as you log on to Vision, before you enable Multicompany, belongs to this initial company.

Create More Companies

After you enable Multicompany and set up the initial company, you can add more companies.

Configure Companies

For each company you add, you must specify intercompany accounts, an intercompany organization, and other configuration settings that support transactions between different companies in your enterprise.

Assign Security Access

By default, when you enable Multicompany no security roles have access to the initial company. You must specify which security roles may access its data. In most situations, you do not want to grant every role access to every company in the enterprise. For example, you may want your project managers to have access to all companies but restrict architects' access to a single company.

You can also restrict which companies can charge to a project and which companies can charge to an account.

Set Up Intercompany Billing

You may also want to set up Intercompany Billing. This is the process of redistributing general ledger financial information between companies that share labor or expense resources on the same project.