FreshLedger Pro lets you create and manage an unlimited number of company files from a single Windows install. If you keep books for ten clients or a hundred, each company gets its own self-contained data file with its own chart of accounts, customers, vendors, employees, fiscal year, and tax settings. You switch between files from a File menu - no separate logins, no per-client billing, no add-on seats. For independent bookkeepers, CPA firms, and controllers running multiple entities (operating company, holding LLC, rental properties, a side S-corp), this eliminates the per-org subscription tax that subscription cloud tools charge. You pay once, $799, and add the eleventh, fiftieth, or two-hundredth company file at no additional license cost. Each file is a real double-entry ledger with full journal, trial balance, and reporting - not a stripped-down 'client view.' This page walks through how multi-company works, why it matters for client work, how the major alternatives handle (or don't handle) the same need, and where the limits actually are.
When you launch FreshLedger Pro, you land on a company-file picker showing recently opened files and a 'New Company' button. Each company file is a single .flp database stored anywhere you choose - a local drive, a mapped network share, a synced folder (Dropbox, OneDrive, a firm-managed file server). There is no central cloud registry. The file is the record. Creating a new company runs a setup wizard: legal name, EIN, entity type (sole prop, partnership, S-corp, C-corp, LLC taxed as X), fiscal year start, accounting method (cash or accrual), and industry-based chart-of-accounts template. You can import a chart from an existing client as a CSV if you maintain a firm-standard COA. Each file maintains its own customer list, vendor list (with 1099-NEC tracking flags), employee roster with W-4 (2020+) withholding settings, item list, and class/location tracking if you use it. Switching between clients is File > Open Company or Ctrl+O. The previous file closes cleanly - FreshLedger writes a transaction log on close so you can recover from an interrupted session. You can have only one file open at a time per running instance, but you can launch a second instance of the application to view two clients side-by-side (read/write on one, read-only on the second copy is the safe pattern when both point at the same file - see Limitations). Reporting is per-file. There is no automatic consolidated parent/subsidiary roll-up across files; for a consolidation, you export trial balances from each entity to CSV and combine them in a worksheet or in a dedicated consolidation tool. Year-end close, 1099-NEC generation, W-2 production, Form 941 quarterly worksheets, and Form 940 annual worksheets all run against the currently open file, using that company's EIN and state IDs. Backups are per-file (File > Backup) and produce a single compressed archive you can email, archive, or hand to a client.
Bookkeeping and CPA economics are brutal when your software vendor charges per client. At roughly $30-$90 per company per month on the major cloud platforms, a 40-client book of business costs $14,000-$43,000 a year in software alone, before payroll add-ons. That cost either compresses your margin or gets passed to clients who then question the bill. A one-time license that supports unlimited files flips the math: the software becomes a fixed cost of practice, not a variable cost per engagement. There is also a structural reason multi-entity support matters: tax law treats entities separately. An S-corp files Form 1120-S with a separate EIN; a single-member LLC disregarded for tax purposes still often keeps separate books for liability and basis tracking; rental real estate held in an LLC reports on Schedule E with its own depreciation schedule (27.5-year residential or 39-year commercial under MACRS, per IRS Pub 946). Commingling these in one ledger creates audit risk and makes basis, at-risk, and passive-activity calculations under IRC §465 and §469 nearly impossible to reconstruct. Separate files per entity is the defensible structure. For CPA firms, separate files also support engagement-letter scoping, workpaper retention (AICPA SSARS requirements for compilation and review engagements typically expect seven-year retention of the underlying records), and clean client handoff. When a client leaves, you hand them their .flp file and a backup - you are not negotiating data export from a SaaS vendor or losing access to historical detail when a subscription lapses.
QuickBooks Online charges a separate subscription per company file. A QBO Plus subscription runs roughly $99/month per company at list price; the ProAdvisor program offers wholesale discounts but the per-company structure remains. Twenty clients on QBO Plus is a five-figure annual line item. Xero is structured similarly: each organization is its own paid subscription. Xero's partner program gives accountants discounted rates and a single sign-on across client orgs, but every active organization still consumes a paid slot. Inactive or archived orgs may be free, but live bookkeeping is metered. QuickBooks Desktop (Pro and Premier) historically allowed multiple company files in one install with no per-file charge, similar to FreshLedger Pro. Intuit has discontinued new Pro/Premier subscriptions for most users and pushed toward QuickBooks Enterprise (subscription) and QBO. Existing Desktop users can keep running their installed version, but new buyers face the subscription model. QuickBooks Enterprise allows multiple files but is priced per user-year in the four-figure range annually. Wave is free for the base product but is structured around a single business per account; managing many client businesses requires separate accounts, and Wave is not designed as a bookkeeper's multi-client workbench. Its accounting depth is also lighter than the others. FreshLedger Pro's position is straightforward: one $799 license, unlimited company files, your data stored as files you control. The trade-off is honest - it is a Windows desktop application, not a cloud platform, and that has real implications covered in Limitations.
Multi-company in FreshLedger Pro does not include automatic consolidated financial statements across files - you export trial balances and combine externally. It does not provide cross-file transaction posting (an intercompany transfer must be booked as two separate journal entries, one in each file). It does not deduplicate vendor or customer lists across files; each file is independent by design. The application is Windows-only; macOS users run it in a VM. Files are single-user at a time - two staff cannot edit the same client file simultaneously, and there is no built-in record locking for concurrent network access beyond Windows file locking. There is no automatic bank feed; transactions import via CSV/OFX/QFX/QBO downloaded from the bank. Payroll tax tables for current-year Form 941, Form 940, and W-2 withholding require the optional $99/year update to stay current.
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