Control and consolidation fact gathering.
A practical ASC 810 workflow for mapping entity structure, organizing control evidence, and separating questions a reviewer can resolve from those that need CPA judgment.
Start with the entity structure, not the spreadsheet.
Control and consolidation work can go wrong when a team begins with trial balances before it understands the legal entities, governing rights, financing, and decision-making arrangements behind them. This lesson focuses on the fact gathering that makes a later ASC 810 review traceable.
The aim is not to decide whether an entity must be consolidated from a short checklist. It is to collect the documents, relationships, and open questions that a qualified reviewer needs to assess the applicable model.
Map the entities and their relationships
Build a current entity map showing legal entities, ownership interests, common-control relationships, management arrangements, and the reporting period being reviewed.
Collect the control evidence
Bring together formation and governing documents, operating agreements, board or manager rights, financing terms, side agreements, and records of who can make the decisions that matter.
Identify variable interests and related parties
Document interests, guarantees, service arrangements, funding, and related-party or de facto agent relationships that may affect how a reviewer evaluates the facts.
Record questions before drawing conclusions
Separate confirmed facts from open questions about voting rights, VIE considerations, primary-beneficiary analysis, common control, presentation, and reporting. ⚠️ CPA review recommended where judgment is required.
This is educational content, not accounting advice. The facts, applicable guidance, and qualified professional judgment determine the appropriate treatment for each reporting entity.
Keep the evidence and open questions close to the books.
Numbers Game can give a firm’s chosen Claude or ChatGPT workflow controlled access to approved QuickBooks Online or Xero data, alongside firm-owned reference files and instructions. That can help the team organize an entity map, reconcile intercompany questions, and prepare a clear list of missing facts for review.
The firm’s qualified reviewer remains responsible for evaluating the evidence, applying the guidance, determining whether consolidated or combined presentation is appropriate, and approving conclusions. Numbers Game does not independently determine GAAP treatment.
See how firm instructions work → · Previous lesson: ASC 810 overview →
What should be in the workpaper trail?
Entity and governance documents
Legal names, organization charts, ownership schedules, governing agreements, board rights, and decision-making authority.
Economic and operating arrangements
Funding, guarantees, service agreements, management arrangements, rights to returns, obligations to absorb losses, and the activities that drive economic performance.
Reporting and presentation questions
Intercompany balances, eliminations, reporting-period alignment, related parties, disclosures, and whether the proposed financial-statement label matches the reviewer’s conclusion.
Continue to workpapers, review, and reporting.
Learn how to organize eliminations, reviewer notes, and a reporting package that can be traced back to the underlying evidence.