Define once, use it everywhere. Grouping account numbers or cost centers hierarchically in meta account "clusters", and later using clusters in reporting in the same way as using accounts, is an elegant and powerful way of summing complex sequences.

No matter what the talking sequence of the account number digits is, and whatever account groupings are used over departments, functions, cost centers or projects, a financial controller would still need to sum accounts not grouped by any of the above criteria. Using complicated Excel formulas is often a solution for this problem. Such a solution shows weaknesses in situations when a new account number is inserted in the chart of accounts, also causing difficulties to trace wrong sums.

Using the Cluster Master, an accountant could freely group any random sequence of account numbers and build with it a new cluster account which always holds the sum of the accounts that it is built from.

A cluster account could be defined as a range of accounts, wild carded accounts, or even other cluster accounts. All definitions are tolerant on inserting new accounts in the chart of accounts. The clustering hierarchy on top of the chart of accounts with its actual balances, budget and forecast figures could be used in both reporting and budgeting.

The values held by the cluster accounts could be retrieved with simple Excel formulas. To keep balances updated on the cluster level with the actuals from the accounting package, despite what accounting package is used, the user needs to feed the Cluster Master with the latest Summarized Trial Balance reports.