Month-End Close Checklist Best Practices for 2022

To avoid any discrepancies that might mess up your final annual financial statements it’s important to closely monitor the finances throughout the year. We understand that bookkeeping can sometimes fall to the wayside when your business requires dozens of other tasks. One month can turn into two and then three, and then you realize you haven’t recorded your finances for an entire year.

But fast-growing businesses with ambitious goals may need to establish the cadence of a monthly closing process so that decision-makers have a reliable baseline for future strategy. Thanks to technology, the close has been getting steadily faster, according to surveys by Ventana Research. In 2014, 58% of companies surveyed took seven or more days to close, and 28% needed eleven days or more.

Month End Close Checklist

These statements include your cash flow statement, balance sheets, and profit and loss statement. Your accounting system should have software that generates these reports automatically. The year-end close process is the same as the month-end process, except you’re accounting for a full year instead of the previous month. Also, in the year-end close process, income and expense accounts are “reset” in preparation for a new year-to-date account. Closing procedures at the end of the month typically take about eight days in a high-growth B2B SaaS company but can take as little as five days in a small business.

HighRadius Autonomous Accounting Application consists of End-to-end Financial Close Automation, AI-powered Anomaly Detection and Account Reconciliation, and Connected Workspaces. Delivered as SaaS, our solutions seamlessly integrate bi-directionally with multiple systems including ERPs, HR, CRM, Payroll, and banks. The month-end close process should be started on the last day of the month to make sure all activity is in the accounting file. The following days will be spent reviewing and reconciling each account.

Stocks finish higher Monday, wrap winning month

Check if you’ve posted debit and credit entries accurately for all the transactions. Next, review if you’ve posted your journal entries correctly into your general ledger. As with Step 1, this part of the month-end close is much more transparent, accurate, and swift if you’ve been recording and tracking spend automatically in your accounting system. You’ll have much less risk of maverick spend or fraud throwing a spanner in the works, too. Whether it’s revenue, invoice payments, or loans, you need to record all the funds your organization received during the month in question. To ensure your month-end close is as smooth and painless as possible, it pays to follow a month-end close checklist.

Our API-first development strategy gives you the keys to integrate your finance tech stack – from one ERP to one hundred – and create seamless data flows in and out of BlackLine. World-class support so you can focus on what matters most.BlackLine provides global product support across geographies, languages, and time zones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We are here for you with industry-leading support whenever and wherever you need it. Perform pre-consolidation, group-level analysis in real-time with efficient, end-to-end transparency and traceability. Reduce risk and save time by automating workflows to provide more timely insights.

Prepare For the Next Closing

Finally, it’s time to think ahead to the month in hand and create a business financial plan to address key risks. If something was particularly manual this month, for example, it might be time to think about creating an automation process. 88% of companies who apply automation can complete the monthly close process within 6 days, compared to only 40% of those who don’t. Month-end close ensures that the books are balanced and that all transactions are accounted for. This helps to prevent errors and fraud, and keeps the financial statements accurate. All income and expenses must be reported accurately to calculate the correct amount of taxes, to track spending and ensure that budgets are being adhered to.

The month-end process starts just before the end of every month, when you’re doing prep work like wrapping up outstanding vendor invoices. All these features of Nanonets allow for fast and accurate closing of the books and efficient management of resources. Take a few pages out of WeWork’s playbook and learn how automation can solve some of the greatest challenges facing your finance team. The majority of month-end activity involves cleaning up transactions that are still pending from iJournals, and processing incoming transactions.

Sticking to the same schedule for releasing financial statements every month can help you better organize your team’s time and activities. Adopting Autonomous Accounting Solutions like HighRadius’ can help you make day-zero financial close a reality through immediate and accurate decisions. The month-end closing process is a routine activity for every business.

Now that you’ve got the general month-end process down, you can start divvying up the tasks among your team members. Starting with a complete checklist can help you get started as you optimize your processes to speed up the close. Remember, the sooner you get the books closed, the sooner you can do the cool stuff in accounting. When you set the year-end in Intuit QuickBooks, the program automatically zeroes out all the income and expense accounts and transfers the balance of net income to Retained Earnings when your fiscal year ends.

What Information Does Accounting Need for Month-End Close?

If this is your first accounting job out of college, you may not know the ins and outs of all the accounting processes or software you’ll be using. Also, if you are using a new financial system, it’s helpful to keep a notebook of tips learned from other users for future reference, Villani said. Use our month end closing checklist to streamline your closing procedures. By analyzing your numbers and implementing learnings, you can drive your business to success.

The most important closing period comes at the end of the financial year. In 2017, the average accountancy team reported that month-end close takes more than 8 days. Having reliable and precise financial data is essential for proper budgeting and forecasting, as it provides a comprehensive view of the company’s current status. Management will often expect faster close times and immediate benefits following process changes.

Accelerate adoption and drive productivity and performance.One of the critical success drivers for any software technology is effective user training and adoption. Whether you are deploying for the first time or creating a sustainable education program for maximum value creation, explore how you can take the next steps to upskill your users. F&A leadership can have a significant impact by creating sustainable, scalable processes that can support the business before, during, and long after the IPO. This company-wide effort crosses multiple functional areas and is reinforced by critical project management and a strong technology infrastructure.

During your monthly close, cross-check your records to make sure you paid all bills and invoices. Chances are, you probably don’t have time to record transactions every day. If this is the case, make sure you write down your purchases and organize receipts. That way, you can keep your accounts payable in tip-top shape for your monthly close. Learn how your organization can take your month-end close process to the next level with task management software for period-end accounting. A month-end close checklist is critical to ensuring a smooth and successful close process.

Automating your procurement process with accounting systems like Accrualify streamlines organizing your accruals and accounts payable and promotes enhanced transparency and efficiency. Not surprisingly, more and more companies are using some sort of automation tool in their account closing process. Manual accounting tasks, when performed under time crunch and stress, can become error-prone.

• Establish a closing date by which all expenses and income must be posted.
• If you’re using a cloud-based, automated solution such as Planergy, many of these data sources will already be connected, organized, and ready for real-time access, manipulation, and analysis as needed.
• On your calendar, plan out when you’re going to collect reports, record transactions, and close your books.
• Guide your business with agility by standardizing processes, automating routine work, and increasing visibility.
• No matter what your bespoke month-end close process looks like, data availability and integrity will make or break its effectiveness.

Typically, financial activities are either transactional and rules-based or contextual, requiring intimate knowledge of the given market or industry. Understanding the kinds of transactions you are dealing with can help you understand whether to automate them or leave them with the finance team that deals in the corresponding market. By standardizing repeat reconciliations, allocations, and other payroll 2020 transactions, you can clearly outline expectations and deliverables to employees. This adds a degree of predictability that most professionals appreciate when creating their to-do lists. In addition, standardized procedures provide a guide for reporting more accurate figures. Just because something is due at the end of the month, doesn’t mean you have to wait until then to complete it.

What is the Month-End Close?

They can also easily identify which areas of the business might need changes in spending. By reviewing all account balances each month, you can stay on top of any changes and make data-based decisions instead of wild guesses. No one wants to find unpleasant or unexpected surprises down the road because you didn’t have an accurate picture of your business. Companies can also forecast for cash flow needs by closing the financial accounts each month.

• Using Google Sheets and Layer, you can set up data collection forms and use templates for different types of financial documents you need.
• Learn how your organization can take your month-end close process to the next level with task management software for period-end accounting.
• Teams need to get out of this vicious cycle by mapping out a more streamlined timeline.
• Poorly organized, low-visibility data makes it impossible to determine if the month’s financial information is accurate and complete.

You’ve already got a never-ending list of tasks to complete, and the closing process steals your attention from money-making business tasks and delivering strategic insights. A thorough and rigorous review of your finances at the end of each month will help ensure that all reports are accurate and up to date. It can be hard work, but if you establish an efficient process for carrying out the close it will get easier over time and help you keep better track of your finances. The month-close process extends well beyond the accounting department. Everyone in the organization should understand how they contribute, and this starts with building relationships with those outside of your immediate domain.

Once you close your books, you can’t go back and create journal entries for that month. So make sure your financials are accurate before closing the accounting period. The month end close process involves recording, reconciling, and reviewing all business transactions and finalizing the account data for the month.