Why cross-border financial management breaks down in PSOs

For many Professional Service organisations (PSOs), international expansion is a crucial part of their growth plans. It lets them keep up with their clients as they move into new markets, tap into fresh pools of talent & strengthen their service offerings. But as PSOs grow (and they often do through acquisitions or opening overseas bases), the straightforwardness of running one finance system melts away. What used to work a treat in one country suddenly becomes a beast when you’ve got multiple entities on your hands. This is when cross-border financial management starts to fall apart.

The problem starts when each country is pretty much running its own mini business. They all tend to have their own separate chart of accounts, tax set-ups & local compliance requirements. Some might even be following different financial calendars or using local accounting software that only meets national rules. When the finance group tries to bring everything together, they end up dealing with multiple versions of the truth. Data gets stored in different systems, mapped out in various ways & formatted in a load of different ways. The result is long hours spent on manual reconciliations, endless tweaks to spreadsheets & a growing risk of human error creeping in.

Currencies add another level of complexity to the mix. PSOs are often working in regions where they bill & report in different currencies, so when exchange rates change, they can mess up the figures. Month-end closing becomes a real headache because you need to convert currencies accurately & then get the local adjustments to line up. When you’ve got no integrated system, these jobs take ages to sort out & are super prone to mistakes. Which means the finance team spends more time fiddling with the numbers than trying to make sense of what they mean. This limits their ability to give real insight into the leadership team and delays the reporting cycle to boot.

Another common issue is system fragmentation. Over time, as a PSO expands, it ends up with loads of different software tools. Some entities will be using one finance system; another might be on something completely different. Project management, billing & expense management systems might all be separate as well. These systems nearly always clash in some way, resulting in loads of duplicated data entry & inconsistent reporting. The lack of standardisation between processes also means that finance teams across countries work in entirely different ways, making group-level consolidation & forecasting a real challenge.

This fragmentation often leads to a lack of visibility. Leadership teams struggle to get a clear view of performance across all the different entities because the data just isn’t there. Decisions get made using out-of-date or incomplete information. When a PSO can’t see where it really stands in real time, it loses its agility. It becomes super hard to allocate resources effectively, assess profitability on a regional level or plan for new projects. Over time, this lack of visibility holds growth back, as finance becomes a reactive rather than forward-thinking part of the business.

Compliance and control are top-of-mind issues. Every country has its own rules for reporting, tax laws and audits, which can be a nightmare to keep up with. Without a system that’s designed to handle multiple entities at once, staying compliant becomes a nearly impossible task. Fiddling with workarounds might keep you going for a little while, but as your organisation grows, the risk of messing up and getting into trouble increases. Even tiny mistakes in inter-company transactions or tax returns can land you with a hefty fine or damage your reputation. Finance teams end up spending so much time dealing with compliance that they’ve got little energy left for the important stuff: planning for the future.

All this highlights the issue that PSOs often hit a breaking point where their finance processes are no longer able to handle growth. Instead of unlocking expansion, the finance function starts to hold you back. The only real way forward is to ditch your old patchwork processes and switch to a unified, multi-entity ERP platform that can handle the complexity of operating across multiple countries.

This is where Unit4 stands out as a good choice for PSOs. Unit4 has been built with organisations that do services rather than manufacturing or retail in mind, which is excellent, because it understands the project-based nature of PSO work. It lets finance teams handle multiple entities, currencies and compliance requirements from a single cloud-based ERP system. This setup means all entities can operate under one financial framework but still meet the local rules of each country. By not needing separate local accounting systems, Unit4 makes group consolidation a lot faster, more accurate, and less reliant on manual spreadsheets.

Since the platform is cloud-based, new entities can be added quickly, which comes in handy if you grow through acquisition or open new offices in new markets. Data is stored in a single place, which means you get instant, real-time visibility across the organisation. Finance leaders can keep an eye on performance across all entities at once, view consolidated results right away, and drill down into details when they need to. This not only makes your data more accurate but also reduces reporting cycles, giving your finance teams more time to focus on what they should be doing: analysing and advising rather than collecting and fiddling with data.