Month-End Close Checklist Best Practices for 2022

Examine your checking and savings accounts, loan and credit accounts, and digital accounts, such as PayPal. Check your balances, deposits, does everyone need to file an income tax return and withdrawals to find discrepancies. If you want to make sure your inventory is correct, you need to perform monthly inventory counts.

• Lean on these teams to set the timeline for overall review, including checking automated figures.
• The month end close is an accounting procedure that finalizes and closes out all financial activity for a business for the preceding month.
• The accounts receivable (AR) ledger is the opposite of accounts payable.
• It also enables you to understand your business’s cash situation and usage and catch any fraudulent activities before they get out of hand.
• From collecting data to reconciling accounts, automation can speed up the workflows drastically.

Keep in mind, each business’s month-end accounting procedures can vary depending on the type of business, accounts, and accounting method. We designed Fullbay to dig into the types of metrics you need to review to dig into your shop’s financials and performance when you close out each month. You can see which of your techs is incredibly efficient, and which might need some extra help to perform the way you know they can. The month-end close checklist can keep you honest and show you where you can improve your operations.

Month-End Close Best Practices

Accountants are expected to interact with various teams during the frantic month end close in large organizations with several functioning teams. A comprehensive checklist that serves as a guide is required to complete the month end close process properly. This month end close checklist becomes a “living document” and serves as a guideline during the month end close process to ensure that all tasks are completed on time. If multiple teams are involved in the monthly closing process, then keeping track of the status of tasks is going to be a significant pain point. HighRadius’ Autonomous Accounting Solution gives real-time visibility into the different financial tasks and ensures activities that involve multiple stakeholders don’t get slowed down. If your financial statements are repeatedly delayed, it’s worth considering how to streamline the steps of the closing process rather than just hurrying up and closing the month at any cost.

• Stay up to date on the latest corporate and high-level product developments at BlackLine.
• Some companies use the term because the month end close requires the reconciliation of a range of accounts.
• Reconcile the 2 to reflect expenses paid and income received for the month.
• Reviewing the effectiveness of procedures helps decision makers identify strengths and weaknesses in the month-end close, draw conclusions about what can be improved, and take corrective actions.
• Understanding why month-end close processes are vital to business is the first step in preparing a checklist.
• It could also signal trouble in your business, especially if the liabilities balance has increased significantly, exposing the company during a downturn.

Having to create multiple spreadsheets to cover labor-intensive data cleansing slows down the process and increases administrative expenses. For accounts receivable entries, look at all the sources of revenue from loans to invoice payments. Has a customer not finished a payment yet, or have you forgotten to send an invoice?

Autonomous Accounting

It is, in actuality, a fairly simple process, and–even better—it will help you understand the state of your business finances much more clearly. Reconciling the books helps you get a handle on all of those critical things you need to know to stay in business—the state of your company’s finances, cash flow, accounts payable, etc. But that is exactly what you are doing if, as a business owner, you do not have a month-end financial and accounting closing process or template. A “month-end close” is an accounting procedure that a small business undertakes to reconcile the books, account for discrepancies, and streamline finances and accounting.

Use your inventory count to make adjustments and reconcile your books when you complete your end-of-the-month procedures. And because fixed assets are generally larger purchases, they can depreciate in value over time. Your fixed assets are long-term items that add value to your business. Things like buildings, equipment, furniture, vehicles, and land are considered fixed assets. If you use petty cash or have a petty cash fund, you need to account for those at month-end, too.

Collect information about income and expenses

Next, you will want to enter and record all payments you have made for the month to all vendors. Make sure you include all payments made by check, debit card, credit card, and cash. This process should also include double checking that you paid all outstanding invoices and bills. A manual month-end close process makes it take even longer – as does not having a structured procedure. Monthly financial statements should be done while they are still relevant. Their information becomes obsolete quite quickly, as the company moves on to the next month.

Finding a system that can automatically transfer data from one system to another is a great way to smooth out the month-end closing process. Even small mistakes in financial statements can lead to big problems when the information rolls into planning. The month-end close lets your teams track all your monthly business transactions. It is essential to ensure that your accounting data is as accurate and complete as possible. The account team usually prefers to use the month end close checklist to handle various tasks during the month end close process.

Business Budget Management Template Set

To make this step easier at the end of the month, the best practice is to record transactions right away when they happen. By the end of the month it will be impossible to remember everything that happened for the past 30 days. Collectively, you can use these documents to create a trial balance.

By looking back on the most recent month-end close process and comparing it to the previous periods, organizations can justify changes and implement their findings right away. Such corrective actions are inherent to effective financial planning and they help with risk mitigation. Check the ending balances for all the relevant bank accounts against the balance sheet, then go through the history of deposits and withdrawals to check for discrepancies. Look out for suspicious activity, unexpected bank charges, and uncleared transactions.

The month end close is the accounting process of collecting and filing all financial transaction information for review, reconciliation, and reporting at the end of each month. At the end of the month, accountants are tasked with ensuring all of the transactions for that month have been processed and are reported accurately. Users of the financial statements (business owners, bankers, investors, management, other companies, etc) rely on the financial statements to make informed decisions.

No matter where the cash comes from, you need to have a record of it. That means verifying that you’ve sent invoices and cross-checking which invoices clients have paid. If you do not have another person you can ask to review your information, double and triple check your own work to ensure the information is accurate. If you don’t accurately track your inventory, you could experience problems like inventory shrinkage. Because milk can spoil, you would need to check your perishable food inventory more frequently.