Legal Entities and Business Units
A Legal Entity represents a legally recognised organisation — a company, trust, partnership, or other body — that can enter into contracts, own assets, and incur liabilities. In Raytio, legal entities are the top-level organisational unit for financial reporting: every ledger belongs to exactly one legal entity, and every journal entry is recorded within a legal-entity context.
Legal entities
Each legal entity record captures the identity and classification of the organisation:
| Attribute | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Legal entity code | Unique short code within the tenant (e.g. ACME_NZ, ACME_AU) |
| Name | Human-readable name with i18n support |
| Legal entity type | Classification code (e.g. COMPANY, TRUST, PARTNERSHIP) |
| Registration number | Legal registration or incorporation number |
| Country | Country of incorporation, referencing the FND country master |
| Currency | Functional currency for the entity, referencing the FND currency master |
| Status | Active/inactive lifecycle state |
| Start/end dates | Optional validity period for the entity |
Legal entity types are backed by a lookup, so tenants can extend the list without code changes.
Legal-entity-to-ledger mapping
A legal entity can have one or more ledgers associated with it. The legal-entity ledger mapping records which ledgers belong to which legal entity and designates one ledger as the primary ledger:
| Attribute | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Legal entity | The owning legal entity |
| Ledger | The FGL ledger being mapped |
| Primary flag | Whether this is the primary ledger for the legal entity |
| Start/end dates | Optional validity period for the mapping |
A legal entity must have exactly one primary ledger at any point in time. Secondary ledgers are used for reporting currencies or management-reporting purposes.
Business-unit usages
A Business Unit in PRM (Party Relationship Management) represents an operating division within an organisation. The FLE module records business-unit usages that define how each business unit participates in financial processing:
| Attribute | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Business unit | Reference to the PRM business-unit record |
| Legal entity | The legal entity this business unit operates under |
| Usage type | The financial context (e.g. GL, AP, AR, FA) |
| Default flag | Whether this is the default usage for the business unit |
| Status | Active/inactive lifecycle state |
Usage types determine which financial modules a business unit can transact in. A single business unit can have multiple usages — for example, it might participate in both General Ledger (GL) and Accounts Payable (AP) processing under the same legal entity.
Organisation-type lookups
Organisation types provide a classification layer for legal entities and business units. These are code-based lookups with i18n support, allowing display values to be translated without changing the underlying codes.
Common organisation types include:
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
COMPANY | Incorporated company |
TRUST | Trust entity |
PARTNERSHIP | Partnership |
SOLE_TRADER | Sole trader / sole proprietor |
GOVT | Government body |
NFP | Not-for-profit organisation |
Tenants can add custom organisation types through the lookup system.
How FLE connects to other modules
- FGL (General Ledger) — each ledger is owned by a legal entity; the mapping is recorded here
- PRM (Party Relationship Management) — business units are party records in PRM; FLE records their financial usages
- FND (Foundation) — countries and currencies are drawn from FND reference data
- FAR / FAP — transactions in Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable are ultimately posted to a ledger that belongs to a legal entity
Entity summary
| Entity | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Legal Entity | Legally recognised organisation that owns ledgers and financial data |
| Legal-Entity Ledger | Maps a ledger to its owning legal entity, with a primary designation |
| Business-Unit Usage | Records how a PRM business unit participates in a financial module |
| Organisation Type | Lookup classification for legal entities (company, trust, partnership, etc.) |
Multi-tenancy
The entire FLE model is tenant-scoped. Every legal entity belongs to a tenant and an organisation, and access controls ensure that users only see data belonging to their own tenant. Within a tenant, authorisation is managed through the platform's permissions system.