Shared costs rarely belong in just one place. An expense may originate in one business unit but need to be distributed across several departments or entities, each with its own allocation rules. When those calculations and journals depend on spreadsheets, recurring allocations can become a bottleneck for finance teams.

Infor SunSystems Corporate Allocations provides a way to distribute values from a source to one or more destinations using defined business rules. Eclipse helps finance teams configure that process for shared costs and intercompany recharges, replacing spreadsheet-based preparation with a controlled, repeatable workflow.

Why spreadsheet-based allocations become difficult to manage

Allocating costs is not simply a matter of splitting a total. Different cost centres may need different drivers, destinations must map to the correct business units, accounts and analysis codes, and intercompany balances must remain aligned with double-entry accounting requirements.

Managing these connected steps through spreadsheets and manual journals can lead to rekeying, inconsistent treatment and a weaker audit trail. As the organisation changes, maintaining transparency and control becomes just as important as reducing the volume of work.

A configured Corporate Allocations process brings the source values, allocation drivers, destinations and accounting treatment together. The aim is to generate consistent journals and intercompany recharges, preserve double-entry integrity and reduce manual preparation without losing visibility of how values reach their final destinations.

How Eclipse approaches Corporate Allocations

The starting point is the accounting requirement: what values need to move, why they need to move and how the resulting entries should be posted. Eclipse then configures and tests the complete cycle through six key stages:

1. Identify the data and sources
   First, identify the transactions, balances or values to be allocated. Confirming the relevant business units, accounts, periods and analysis codes establishes a clear starting point for the process.

2. Define the calculations and drivers
   Next, establish whether the source values need to change and what should drive that calculation. This could be a fixed percentage uplift, a proportional split, a ratio, a fixed amount or another defined business measure.

3. Map the destinations
   The allocation rules define where the values should be posted. They may move to different accounts within the same entity or be split across multiple target business units, with the appropriate destination accounts and analysis codes.

4. Configure the accounting treatment
   The resulting entries must reflect the organisation’s reporting requirements. Depending on the requirement, this may involve summarising transactions, creating intercompany balancing entries or generating additional debits and credits.
   

5. Test the allocations
   Before the recurring process is deployed, totals and accounting outcomes are reviewed, exceptions are investigated and the configuration is adjusted where needed.

6. Establish reporting and traceability
   A transparent view of the results at each stage helps finance teams trace the allocation from source to posting. The controlled process can then be rerun for each reporting cycle or revised input set.

Together, these six stages turn recurring finance rules into a repeatable cycle. Once validated, the process can be run consistently without rebuilding the calculation or journal logic each period.

Corporate Allocations in practice: two anonymised examples

Different organisations need different allocation rules, but the objective is the same: less manual preparation and greater consistency and control. These two anonymised Eclipse implementations show how that works in practice.

Property and regeneration: allocating transactions across business units

A UK property development and regeneration organisation needed to distribute transactions accurately across multiple business units. Eclipse configured Infor SunSystems Corporate Allocations to use the organisation’s existing SunSystems analysis codes to identify the correct destination business unit for each transaction, embedding the allocation rules directly within the system configuration.

This replaced manual calculations and spreadsheet-based preparation with a consistent, repeatable process, giving finance users greater confidence in how transactions were allocated.

Insurance and reinsurance: connecting complex intercompany recharges

An international specialist insurance and reinsurance group needed to process complex intercompany expense recharges across multiple entities and business units. Eclipse configured a multi-stage Corporate Allocations process incorporating cost-centre rules, recharge destination mapping, double-entry accounting, transaction aggregation and further allocation to specific destinations.

Bringing these connected accounting activities into one controlled workflow reduced manual intervention and improved the consistency of intercompany recharge processing.

Move allocation logic out of spreadsheets and into SunSystems

Across both implementations, Eclipse translated agreed business rules into structured SunSystems processes that generated the required accounting entries and provided clearer traceability from source transactions to final postings. The result was reduced manual effort, stronger financial control and a solution that could be maintained as allocation requirements changed.

Are you still managing shared costs or intercompany recharges in spreadsheets? Talk to Eclipse about configuring SunSystems Corporate Allocations for your organisation. Please call +44 (0)203 866 8800, email Enquiries@eclgrp.com, or: