What is Month-end close?
Month-end close is the recurring process of finishing a period's accounting: posting entries, reconciling accounts, booking accruals, reviewing variances and locking the books so reports can be issued.
In more detail
A close usually runs from a checklist with owners and deadlines: bank and subledger reconciliations, accruals and prepayments, depreciation, intercompany entries, variance review and sign-off. Time to close is the common KPI, and it drifts when tasks sit with people waiting on each other. Automation fits the mechanical parts: pulling bank files, matching transactions, drafting recurring journals and chasing missing inputs. Judgment items like estimates and reserves stay with accountants. A tracked checklist with live status often shortens close more than any single tool does. Our month-end close blueprint shows how we structure it.
Example
A controller's close checklist has 42 tasks across six people. An automation pulls bank data on day one, drafts depreciation and recurring accruals on day two and flags unreconciled accounts to their owners each morning.