A financial plan for a family with one employer and three accounts starts from a balance sheet the software builds in a minute. A plan for a family with a trust, a holding company, two operating LLCs, a rental and a note between two of the companies starts from a balance sheet somebody has to construct, and the construction is where the plan goes wrong: the same property counted twice, an LLC listed as an asset on top of what it owns, a $25,000 intercompany note counted as an asset and never as the liability it also is.
This guide is for financial planners and advisors, and for the families they serve, on building a consolidated family balance sheet across entities: the structure, the look-through, the eliminations, the valuation cadence, the liquidity split, and a spreadsheet template you can download and use for the first version before the client's books can produce it themselves.
The consolidated family balance sheet has the same rows as any balance sheet (cash, brokerage, retirement, real estate, businesses, receivables, notes; then cards, mortgages, business loans, notes payable, taxes accrued) and one column per legal person: the individuals, each trust, each LLC and corporation. Each entity's column holds what that entity owns and owes, from its own records. A separate eliminations column removes everything that appears twice because it is owed within the family. The consolidated column is the sum. That layout, rather than a single list of assets, is what makes the number auditable: every figure traces to an entity's books, and every elimination is visible.
The most common error is to list "Maple Rentals LLC: $150,000" in the family's assets while also listing the rental property and its mortgage that Maple holds. An LLC has no value of its own; it is the net of what is inside it. Either list the LLC's contents in its own column (the recommended approach, since it shows the mortgage and the cash separately) or list the LLC's net book value as one line and nothing from inside it, never both. Where the family owns a percentage of an entity with outside partners, list the family's share of the net value, or the family's share of each line if the plan needs the detail.
A note from Pine Holdings to Maple Rentals is a receivable in Pine's column and a payable in Maple's. The family as a whole is neither richer nor poorer for it, so the eliminations column carries the same amount with the opposite sign on both lines, and the consolidated column shows zero for that note. The same treatment applies to management fees accrued between entities, reimbursements outstanding, and a loan from an individual to one of the companies. The elimination only works if both sides carry the same balance; if Pine says $25,000 and Maple says $23,875, the balance sheet has a $1,125 error and the books need fixing before the plan is built. Our guide to loans between LLCs explains why the two sides drift.
A revocable trust is a column like any other, and its contents are the grantor's for every planning purpose. An irrevocable trust is a judgment: include it as a column labelled as such, and show two consolidated totals, one that excludes irrevocable trusts (net worth in the strict sense, what a lender or an estate tax estimate needs) and one that includes them (family wealth, what a multi-generational plan needs). Do not blend the two into one number; the client's questions differ and so do the answers.
| Line | Source | Cadence |
|---|---|---|
| Cash, brokerage, retirement | Account balances | Live or monthly |
| Real estate | Automated estimate or appraisal; cost plus improvements as a floor | Quarterly; appraisal at refinance or sale |
| Operating businesses | Book value from each entity's balance sheet; a multiple only as a labelled estimate | Monthly at close; multiple annually |
| Notes between family entities | Amortization schedule, both sides | Every payment |
| Private investments (SAFEs, fund interests) | Cost, or latest priced round or capital account statement | At each event or statement |
| Vehicles, collectibles | Resale value | Semi-annually |
| Mortgages, loans, lines | Lender statements, principal balance | Every payment |
| Taxes accrued | The current-year forecast less payments made | Monthly |
Two families with the same consolidated net worth can be in opposite positions: one with a third of it in cash and brokerage, the other with almost all of it in property and companies. Mark each asset line liquid or not, sum the liquid lines, and show the liquid share of net worth as its own figure. It is the number that decides whether an estimated tax payment, a capital call, a college bill or a business's slow quarter is funded from cash or from a sale, and it is usually the number the client has never seen.
Download the family balance sheet template (Excel). It has four tabs: an entity list with ownership percentages; the balance sheet with one column per entity, an eliminations column, a consolidated column, a liquid flag per line and the liquid share computed; an intercompany matrix that flags any pair of entities whose mirror balances disagree; and a valuation cadence sheet to record the method and last update per asset. It is pre-filled with a sample family (six entities, a $23,875 note between two of them) so the mechanics are visible before you clear it.
The template is the first version. Its limit is the same as every spreadsheet: it is right on the day it is built and drifts from the next payment, the next transfer and the next account opened.
The consolidated balance sheet is a report on the entities' books. If each entity's books close monthly, with intercompany notes carried on both sides from a shared schedule, the consolidation is an export and the eliminations are automatic. If the books are four bank feeds and a spreadsheet, the consolidation is a project every time. HaraPro keeps every entity of a family in one login with its own books, links each intercompany payment to the note it belongs to so both sides agree, draws the ownership map from the books, and produces the consolidated view with the intercompany lines eliminated and the liquid share split out; advisors can see the arrangement on the investments and net worth page, and our guide on net worth across trusts and LLCs walks a family through the same rules.
One column per person, trust and entity with that entity's own assets and liabilities, an eliminations column that removes everything the family owes itself, and a consolidated column that sums them. Look through entities to their contents rather than listing the entity as an asset.
Either the LLC's contents in its own column, or its net book value as a single line, never both. Listing the entity and its contents double counts.
Entries that remove amounts owed between family entities, such as a note from one LLC to another, so they do not appear as both an asset and a liability in the consolidated total. They require both sides to carry the same balance.
Show two totals: strict net worth excluding irrevocable trusts the client does not control, and family wealth including them, labelled. Different questions need different numbers.
Account balances monthly or live, notes at every payment, property quarterly, businesses at each monthly close, private investments at each event. In practice that means it should come from the entities' books rather than be rebuilt by hand.