Mayday vs Translucent

At a glance

1. Translucent's intercompany page and pricing table list FX adjustment journals.
2. Translucent describes recharging "to multiple entities". No public reference to recharges between departments or tracking categories inside a single entity.
3. Mayday Accruals is in early access at the time of writing.
4. Translucent's site has with no accruals product page, navigation entry or launch post.
5. Through Easy Month End, Mayday's close product. It's a separate application with its own login.
6. Translucent has an agent-based close product for accounting practices with task lists and checklists. Waiting-list only at the time of writing.
7. Flux compares month on month, drills into nominals and transactions, suggests commentary, and records review and approval at nominal or total level.
8. Translucent reports variances in consolidated reports and in budget vs actuals. No public evidence of a commentary or sign-off workflow.
9. Mayday HQ manages chart of accounts and tracking categories across every entity and writes changes back into Xero.
10. Translucent maps your chart of accounts inside its own reporting layer and audits tracking categories across entities, but the audit is read-only — its own documentation says mismatches are fixed by updating each Xero file yourself.
11. Mayday's SOC 2 certification is under way. Current controls are published on the Mayday security page.
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What both products do

Intercompany is the overlap, with Mayday leading on month-end close. Both will:

• Map intercompany loan account relationships across entities
• Show you a matrix of which balances don't agree
• Surface the transactions behind a difference
• Post the correcting journal into Xero or QuickBooks Online in one click
• Calculate and post FX adjustments
• Run rule-based recharges, one-off or recurring, as invoices or journals
• Match a bank statement line in one entity to an invoice in another, inside Xero's bank rec screen

Translucent's comparison page says it offers "all the same features as Mayday" on intercompany. On that list, fair enough. The question is what happens on the other twelve days of your close.
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Where Mayday is stronger

Mayday's case is coordination and automation together: running the close and doing the accounting work inside it. Translucent is strong on the reporting that comes after the close. It does comparatively little to get you there.

It runs the close.
‍Easy Month End handles task management, ownership, progress tracking and balance sheet reconciliation review - the difference between knowing month end is late and knowing which entity is holding it up. Translucent's nearest equivalent is an agent that works through task lists on a schedule, aimed at accounting practices and available by waiting list only. For an in-house team that has to close and evidence a close now, this is the widest gap between the two products.

Adjusting journals as one job, not four spreadsheets.
Both automate prepayments and deferred revenue. Mayday adds accruals, and runs the whole set through one identify, review and post workflow. Same review step, same audit trail, same place.

Variance commentary, written and signed off.
‍Flux compares month on month, drills to the transaction, drafts the commentary and records who approved what at nominal or total level. Translucent will show you a variance. Someone still has to explain it, and nothing in Translucent captures that explanation.

Master data that gets fixed, not just flagged.
‍Mayday HQ manages chart of accounts and tracking categories across the group and writes changes back into Xero. Translucent's tracking category audit finds the inconsistencies and reports them; its own documentation then tells you to go and update the name in each Xero file. In a fifteen-entity group that's the difference between a task and an afternoon.

Recharges inside an entity, not only between them.
‍Recharger allocates across departments, cost centres and tracking categories within one company as well as between companies. Head office costs split across five departments is the same monthly chore as splitting them across five entities, and Translucent's public material only covers the second.

Single-entity teams.
‍Almost everything Translucent does assumes more than one file. A single company with subscription revenue, prepaid contracts, departmental recharges and a ten-day close has a hard month end and nothing to consolidate. That team gets the whole of Mayday and very little of Translucent.

Ledgers and fit

Both connect to Xero and QuickBooks Online, and both can pull entities from each into a single group.

The more useful question is what makes your month hard. Translucent's value scales with entity count: more files, more to consolidate, more to search. Mayday's scales with close complexity, and the two aren't the same. Three entities with deferred revenue schedules, monthly recharges and a chart of accounts that has drifted apart is a harder close than eight tidy entities that need adding up.

Pricing

The two charge on different axes, so a headline figure will mislead you in one direction or the other.

Translucent charges a flat pricing structure, however many entities you connect. £49 a month per app billed annually, £98 billed monthly.

Mayday charges per entity, with the intercompany products bundled. One plan covers Balancer, Recharger, BRAG and Mayday HQ together, priced on group size. Flux, Deferred Revenue and Prepayments are add-ons. There's a free Basic tier, and a 30-day trial with no card against Translucent's 14 days.

What the money buys differs, though. Mayday's Active plan at ten entities covers intercompany reconciliation with FX and interest, unlimited recharge rules including between departments, unlimited cross-entity bank reconciliation, and chart of accounts and tracking category management that writes fixes back into Xero - a capability Translucent doesn't have at any price. Their £49 buys reconciliation, recharges and group bank rec. Add Consolidation and you're at £98; add Treasury and Search and you're at £196.

So: multi entity and intercompany alone, Translucent is cheaper. A smaller group, or one that wants the close automated rather than just the balances agreed, and the comparison turns.

Which should you choose

Translucent, if consolidated group reporting is the job you're buying for, you need group cash visibility or search across entities, or you have twenty-odd entities and need intercompany and nothing else.

Mayday, if the close is the bottleneck rather than the reporting. You want accruals, prepayments, deferred revenue and recharges handled and reviewed in one place, you need the chart of accounts kept consistent across entities and actually corrected, you recharge between departments as well as companies, or you're a single entity with a complicated month.

Both, if you have a real consolidation requirement and a real close problem. You'd pay twice for intercompany, but nothing else overlaps, and groups do run Translucent for reporting alongside Mayday for the close. Decide which one owns intercompany at the start rather than discovering it on day three.

Frequently asked questions

Translucent says it has all the same features as Mayday. Is that true?

On intercompany, broadly. Both handle loan account and AR/AP matrices, discrepancy detection, one-click adjustments into Xero and QuickBooks Online, FX journals, rule-based recharges and cross-entity bank reconciliation. The claim is about intercompany only, though, and their page doesn't go further. It doesn't cover close management, balance sheet reconciliations, accruals, variance commentary or group chart of accounts management, because Translucent doesn't currently offer them.

Their comparison page says Mayday doesn't support QuickBooks Online. Is that right?

No. Mayday supports Xero, QuickBooks Online and Intuit Enterprise Suite. That page looks to be a year or more old - it still links to previous versions of Translucent's own homepage and pricing page, and its navigation lists apps that appear nowhere else on their site.

Is Mayday SOC 2 certified?

Certification is in progress. In the meantime the controls are published on our security page: independent penetration testing, encryption in transit and at rest, SSO and MFA through Xero and Intuit, role-based access control, 24/7 monitoring, centralised audit logging, GDPR and Australian Privacy Principles compliance, and a public status page showing 99.99% uptime over the last twelve months. Translucent is already certified. If your IT team needs the certificate itself rather than the controls behind it, ask us where the process has got to.

Which is cheaper, Mayday or Translucent?

Depends on entity count and on how much of month end you want covered. Translucent charges a flat £49 a month per app billed annually, whatever the number of entities. Mayday charges by group size: its Active plan, which bundles intercompany reconciliation, recharges, cross-entity bank reconciliation and group chart of accounts management, is £34 a month at two entities, £139 at ten and £229 at twenty. So at the small end Mayday is cheaper, and from ten entities upwards Translucent is for intercompany on its own. Once you're buying more than one Translucent app, or you want the chart of accounts write-back and departmental recharges that aren't in their product, the scale changes.

Can Mayday consolidate our group accounts?

No, and if that's the requirement you want a consolidation tool - Translucent among them. Mayday's job is upstream: intercompany reconciled, recharges posted, chart of accounts aligned across entities, adjusting journals done and reviewed, so that whatever consolidates the numbers is consolidating clean ones.

Do the two work together?

Yes, and some groups run both. They connect to the same Xero and QuickBooks Online files without conflict. The usual split is Translucent for consolidation, reporting, treasury and search, Mayday for the close and the accounting inside it. Intercompany is the only overlap, so agree up front which product owns it.

Which is better for a single-entity business?

Mayday. Translucent is built for groups and most of its value comes from having several files to bring together. A single-entity team with complex prepayments, deferred revenue, departmental recharges or a slow close gets the full benefit of Mayday and very little of Translucent.

Last reviewed: August 2026