The problem
Sage Fixed Assets has a Merge Companies feature that creates a new company from several existing ones, leaving the originals unchanged. It only works when the companies line up: matching fiscal year-ends and short years, and settings that agree down to how the business start date was entered. Users regularly post that a company won't appear as available to merge, especially across databases, and the cause turns out to be a single date typed instead of picked from the calendar.
The bigger problems sit underneath. Each company may use its books differently, custom fields may mean different things in each entity, and asset numbers can collide. Merging without sorting those out gives you one company with several sets of rules inside it.
How we merge companies
We start with an assessment of every company in scope: fiscal years, short years, book setup, methods, custom field use, numbering and any period closes. That produces a mapping you approve, covering which field means what in the combined company, how asset numbers are kept unique, and how prior accumulated depreciation is preserved as of the merge date. Then we align the companies, merge them, and reconcile the merged totals to the source companies by book.
We are currently consolidating a client's several hundred Sage Fixed Assets entities into a single company, so large merges with inconsistent field use are familiar ground.
Typical merge projects
- Combining an acquired company's fixed assets with the buyer's.
- Moving assets from several operating companies into a new real estate or holding entity.
- Consolidating many small entities into one company, using a custom field or the owner field to keep the legal entity.
- Merging companies that live in different Sage databases.
How the work is delivered
There are two ways to use the Critical Field Updater. Most clients start with a done-for-you project: you send the asset list and the new values, we agree on the effective-date rule for each group of assets, run a validation pass, make the changes, and hand back a before-and-after report by book that your team and your auditors can tie out. Clients who face these changes every quarter can run the same tool themselves through FAHA, our fixed asset platform, which connects to Sage Fixed Assets and keeps an audit trail of every change and who approved it.
Either way, every project starts with a full company backup in Sage Fixed Assets, and nothing is written until the validation report has been reviewed by a person on your side.
Frequently asked questions
Why won't Sage let me merge these companies?
The usual causes are fiscal year-ends, short years or business start dates that don't match exactly, including dates typed rather than selected. We check every setting before attempting the merge.
Are the original companies changed?
No. Merge Companies creates a new company and leaves the originals as they were, which also gives you a clean fallback.
Can companies with different fiscal years be merged?
Not directly. They need to be aligned first, usually by running depreciation to a common date and locking the balances. We plan that with you so prior accumulated depreciation is preserved.
Should we keep separate companies or consolidate?
It depends on how many state and custom books you need and how you report. We help you decide before any data moves.