Consolidation Rulebook and Elimination Controls Director

The mandate

This consulting engagement addresses one narrow problem: consolidation adjustments and eliminations are applied through accumulated practice rather than a controlled, testable rulebook. The Consulting Director will convert that practice into a documented accounting and control design, prove it on selected close data, and hand over artifacts that internal owners can operate. The commission does not include replacing the consolidation platform or running the production close.

The required artifacts are a perimeter-and-ownership map, an elimination taxonomy, a rulebook linking each adjustment class to accounting rationale and evidence, a controlled exception workflow, test scripts, a pilot findings report, and an operating guide. Each artifact must distinguish recurring logic from judgment, identify upstream data assumptions and preserve a reviewer-readable trail from submitted balances to group result.

Five milestones govern delivery. Discovery and confirmed scope are due 6 November 2026; the diagnostic and risk map by 11 December; the draft rulebook and control design by 5 February 2027; pilot execution and defect closure by 2 April; and accepted handover by 14 May 2027. Dates may move only through a documented change decision, not silent compression of review time.

Acceptance rests with the Group Financial Controller after nominated accounting, control and local-owner reviewers have completed their checks. The final solution must allow an experienced reviewer, uninvolved in its design, to select an elimination class, identify the governing rule, reproduce the expected treatment on supplied test data and trace an exception to approval. Unresolved high-severity pilot defects prevent acceptance.

The client-side inputs are timely access to redacted consolidation outputs, policy materials, selected prior adjustments, accountable subject-matter owners and decisions on disputed accounting treatments within five working days. The consultant is responsible for analysis, facilitation, artifact quality and knowledge transfer; management remains responsible for policy approval, production entries and close sign-off.

What you will own

• Catalogue elimination and adjustment classes by accounting purpose, trigger, source evidence, calculation owner and approval path.
• Reconcile written policy with observed close practice, explicitly logging differences that require management decision rather than consultant assumption.
• Draft a rulebook that covers intercompany balance, profit, dividend, ownership and other recurring consolidation treatments at decision-useful depth.
• Design preventive and detective controls around rule maintenance, source completeness, exception approval and post-close review.
• Build representative test cases including asymmetry, timing differences, currency effects, ownership changes and unsupported overrides.
• Execute a controlled pilot, classify defects by cause and verify closure evidence before recommending operational adoption.
• Train designated owners to maintain rules, challenge exceptions and repeat the testing protocol after future changes.
• Escalate scope ambiguity and withheld client inputs through formal change control; the consultant cannot impose accounting policy.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate personal leadership of consolidation-control design across multiple ledgers or reporting bases, beyond ordinary close management.
• Provide a rulebook or control taxonomy example that translated technical accounting into reproducible operational decisions.
• Show how you tested elimination logic with imperfect data and separated rule defects from source-data defects.
• Evidence deep command of intercompany eliminations, ownership accounting, currency translation and consolidation journal governance.
• Describe a consulting milestone you withheld from acceptance because a severe defect remained, and how it was resolved commercially.
• Demonstrate effective knowledge transfer to internal accounting owners without creating proprietary dependence on your team.
• Show disciplined change control when stakeholders attempted to add platform, policy or production activities to a bounded commission.

Working terms and boundaries

• The fixed project fee covers seven months, four days a week and five milestones with ten working days allowed for each formal acceptance review.
• Deliverables are limited to the named rulebook, control, test, pilot and handover artifacts; system implementation and production processing are excluded.
• Milestone payment follows written acceptance by the Group Financial Controller, subject to closure of agreed severity-one findings.
• Delayed access or decisions will be logged as client dependencies and may trigger a schedule change, but not automatic fee expansion.
• Intellectual working papers remain the consultant’s; organisation-specific rulebooks, test evidence and operating guides transfer on final payment.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 8 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-CON-2026-DXB-04.