The finance problem for councils and recreation providers
Councils and recreation providers run aquatic centres, leisure facilities and community programs across many sites, and the money moves in every direction: casual entry, memberships, program fees, venue hire, grants and subsidies. Facilities are often held in different entities, a commercial arm, a trust or a contracted operator, each with its own accountability. Pulling a true picture of how the estate performs, and where cash sits, is a recurring manual exercise.
When each facility reports separately and finance assembles a group view in a spreadsheet, the figures are old by the time they are ready, intercompany transactions are awkward to eliminate, and comparing facilities fairly takes manual effort every period. For a public operator answerable for its budget, that lag is a real constraint.
Finance and consolidation software for councils and recreation has to consolidate facilities and entities automatically, show current performance and forecast cash. Cohiva Crunch is built for it.
What Crunch does for public recreation operators
Crunch is a full-stack ERP with AI financial intelligence, aimed at finance teams consolidating across multiple entities. For a council or recreation provider that means:
- Real-time profit and loss for each facility and the group, available now rather than at period end.
- 13-week cash forecasting across the entities you consolidate, which matters when income is seasonal and capital works are lumpy.
- Multi-entity consolidation, combining facilities or entities into one set of accounts with intercompany eliminations and a shared chart of accounts.
- Natural language querying of the financial data, so a manager can ask a question in plain words.
One data layer with Complex and Control
The advantage for a public operator is the native connection to the rest of the suite. Transaction data flows from Complex, the facility management product, into Crunch, so facility income reaches finance without a manual export. Asset value and depreciation flow from Control, so the asset base is reflected in the accounts.
The result is a consolidated, current view of income, cost and asset value across the estate, assembled from live data rather than rebuilt by hand each period.
Why consolidation matters here
Public recreation estates frequently span several entities for governance, contracting or grant reasons. Single-ledger accounting tools cannot consolidate those entities and eliminate intercompany transactions without manual workarounds. Crunch is built for multi-entity consolidation from the start, which is what makes it fit a council or multi-facility recreation provider.
Where this sits in your operation
Crunch is the finance layer of an integrated platform for councils and recreation. Run it with Complex for facility operations and Control for asset maintenance, all on one identity and one data layer. The solutions for councils and recreation page shows the full bundle, including asset and maintenance management.
For the product detail, Explore Crunch.
What good looks like day to day
A connected finance layer changes how a public recreation operator manages its estate, rather than only how it reports. A finance team opens a current view and sees each facility's income and cost on a shared chart of accounts, so facilities are compared on the same basis without collecting a separate report from each site. Grants, subsidies and intercompany flows are handled within the consolidation rather than reconciled by hand every period.
Because the figures are current, the operator can act on them. A facility whose costs are running ahead of income is visible while there is still time to respond, and the 13-week cash forecast flags a seasonal squeeze before it arrives, which matters when capital works and grant timing are lumpy. Asset value from Control is reflected in the accounts, so the estate's financial picture is whole. For a council answerable for its budget, that turns finance from a slow, manual close into an ongoing view of how the estate is performing and where attention and funding need to go.
Who it is for
Crunch suits councils and recreation providers running facilities across several sites or entities, that need consolidated accounts, current performance by facility and a cash forecast rather than a spreadsheet assembled weeks after each period closes.