Branch Accounting

  

Setting up individual accounts for each branch of a large organization to provide more granular accounting and analysis.

Hogwarts was bleeding money, but Dumbledore couldn’t figure out why. To get a better sense, he implemented a branch accounting system to track expenses for each of the school’s houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Upon further analysis, it became apparent that Hogwarts’ cash flows were being drained because Gryffindor was spending entirely too much on beauty spells, including “Luminus Boltus Scar Concealerum.”

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Finance: What is an Omnibus Account?111 Views

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Finance a la shmoop. What is an omnibus account?

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Herbi just eats leaves, Carni just eats meat, Omni well it's pretty much [Different buses eating stuff]

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everything. So yeah an omnibus as in bus-i-ness or business account services is

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a bunch of investors who've all pitched in or wired in their capital to become a

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percentage owner of that omnibus account. Why would people do this? Scale, volume,

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discounts size, heft. When you have a lot of money in an account basic things like [Lots of money in a suitcase]

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audit and legal fees and brokerage services and the fees with them and

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other one-off costs get amortized across a lot of people in dollars invested [Definition of Amortization]

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rather than being laid entirely or solely on one investor where they can

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then be a meaningful percentage of the total and with an omnibus account you [Bus labelled Omni eating leaves]

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also get anonymity since it's a broker dealing in street name with the account [Anonymity stamp]

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interfacing with the street well investors can live if they want in the

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lovely dark shadows of Erewhon. Omnibus accounts are sort of like your own [Full moon in a dark sky]

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custom mutual fund without the whole nav, net asset value stamp requirements at

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the end of each trading day and all the other regulations and filings and legal

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crap needed for publicly offered securities it's like having a fully [Book labelled my very own omnibus account]

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gassed up bus with a working GPS and Waze system you can drive anywhere you [Guy sat on a bus]

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want on the investing landscape you don't have to tell anyone outside of

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your own partners about it, and it works great as long as you all want to eat the

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same kind of financial cooking.. [Omni asking Carni if he is going to finish his food]

Up Next

Finance: What is a Wrap Account?
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A wrap account is an account that wraps into one annual fee all of the services you'd normally pay for a la carte at a given brokerage.

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)