Closes that drag on for weeks are rarely slow because the work is hard. They are slow because the work happens in the wrong order: someone reconciles the bank before the feeds are complete, or everything waits on one missing receipt. This is the sequence we use to close a month in five business days.
Before month-end: set up the close
- Recurring journals scheduled: rent, depreciation, loan interest.
- A cutoff reminder sent to the client for final invoices, bills and receipts.
- Prepaid, accrual and fixed-asset schedules rolled forward.
- Last month's open questions reviewed and followed up.
Day 1: Capture
Import every bank and card feed, categorize every transaction and match receipts. Anything unclear goes into a query log right away rather than into a suspense account. Nothing is silently assumed.
Day 2: Reconcile cash
Reconcile each bank, credit card and payroll account to its statement. List reconciling items with their expected clearing dates, and bring clearing and undeposited-funds accounts to zero.
Day 3: Payables and receivables
Match bills to vendor statements, apply customer receipts and review both agings. Flag anything over 60 days and any unapplied cash.
Day 4: Adjust
Post prepaids, accruals, depreciation and deferred revenue. Tie payroll journals to the payroll register. Settle capitalize-or-expense questions with the client in writing.
Day 5: Review and deliver
A senior accountant who did not prepare the file reviews it: balance sheet tie-outs, a comparison against last month, and every open query. Then the close pack goes out and the period is locked.
What makes five days possible
- A query log, not a suspense account. Questions are asked on Day 1, not discovered on Day 5.
- One owner per account. Everyone knows who reconciles what.
- The same checklist every month. The same steps, in the same order.
- Review on the calendar. Review is a scheduled day, not something squeezed in at the end.
- A locked period. Once a month is delivered, changes go through an adjusting entry, not a quiet edit.
Why closes slip
- Documents arrive after the cutoff.
- Clearing accounts that never get reconciled.
- A single reviewer for every file in the firm.
- No agreed delivery date.
What the client receives
Our close pack contains a one-page summary, profit and loss statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, bank reconciliations, AR and AP agings, and the query log. You can see a complete example, with every figure tied out, in our sample close pack.
“Business days” exclude public holidays. Five days is our target for a typical file; very high-volume or multi-entity files are scheduled individually.
