Month-end close prep and the accountant's package

The problem

Month end means chasing missing documents, explaining odd transactions and emailing files back and forth. It drags on, and the accountant's questions arrive weeks later.

What SI does

SI runs through your close checklist: unreconciled bank lines with suggested matches, uncategorized transactions with suggested categories, missing receipts and bills, and balances that moved oddly from last month. It writes a short note on each exception and gathers the month's statements, invoices and receipts into one indexed folder for the accountant.

Examples

The same job looks different in different businesses. These are illustrations, not client results.

• Dental practice

  The package includes bank and card statements, supplier invoices, and a note that lab fees are unusually high this month because of a batch of crowns.

• Small manufacturer

  Unreconciled lines include two customer deposits with suggested invoice matches, and a raw-materials bill with no receiving record.

• Online store

  Payment-processor payouts are broken into sales, fees and refunds so they reconcile against the bank deposits.

What it takes to set up

Read access to the accounting tool, bank exports and document folders. Your checklist. Setup is often about a week.

Try it yourself

Paste this into your SI tool of choice and swap the [bracketed] parts for your own details. It asks SI to stop and show you before it does anything.

For [month], go through my close checklist [paste]. List unreconciled bank lines with suggested matches, uncategorized transactions with suggested categories, missing receipts or bills, and balances that changed by more than [20%] from last month, with a short note on each. Gather statements and documents from [folders] into one indexed folder for the accountant. Pause and show me before sending, submitting, posting or changing anything.