Hello, fellow professionals.

I recently joined a small real estate investment group (REIG) with assets under management just under $2 billion, owning over 50 income-producing properties, multiple operating companies, and equity investments in startups and small businesses. Previously, I worked at a Big Four accounting firm.

Many of the group's properties are held under different funds, which in turn are owned by co-investors, trusts, and other entities. This means the company needs to maintain separate books for all entities, funds, trusts, co-investors, etc. For most entities, they recently migrated from outdated accounting software to QuickBooks (trust me, a nightmare for auditors). Income-producing properties were migrated to Yardi. However, each property also has a corresponding QuickBooks book in Yardi, updated as cash is distributed to investors or large loans are received. Overall, we face over 200 sets of books across two ERP systems.

So, how do they handle reconciliation and investor reporting? Our CFO has a password-protected "master" Excel workbook, accessible only to him, containing over 500 tabs! How is the data in these tabs populated? Actually, we have hundreds of other Excel files, where analysts enter data from Yardi and QuickBooks, which then flow into his "master" file. It's a linking and reconciliation disaster, and only one person in the entire company knows how it works.

When I learned about the systems here, I was stunned and immediately realized I had to take on the challenge to find some way to automate this process. While some improvements have been made (e.g., using mappings to avoid manually hardcoding all numbers from Yardi each month), I need to take it to the next level, which is why I've come to these forums.

I need your help. What is the best consolidation/reconciliation software for a company like mine? In the past, I've used Hyperion and Blackline extensively (but mainly in much larger, more multinational companies), and I'm not sure if they are suitable for my current company.

Any suggestions? What other solutions would you recommend for someone in my situation?

Thanks in advance for the PF family's help.