The month-end close

The close is the set of tasks that turns a month of recorded transactions into reliable financial statements: cut-off, sub-ledger closing, accruals and adjustments, reconciliations, review and reporting. A good close is accurate (few corrections after the event), timely (management gets numbers while they're still useful) and repeatable (the same tasks, the same evidence, every month).

Working days. Closes are planned in working days relative to period end. Period end is WD0; the first working day after it is WD1; tasks done before period end are WD−1, WD−2… Count only the entity's working days: Juniper works Sunday to Thursday, so Friday and Saturday don't count.

Dependencies drive the sequence. Ask what each task needs before it can start: - Cut-off comes first: last shipments invoiced, goods received logged, inventory counted at period end. - Sub-ledgers close (sales, purchasing, inventory, fixed assets, payroll) and post to the GL. - Accruals and adjustments follow, because you can only accrue what the sub-ledgers didn't capture: goods received not invoiced, expenses without invoices, prepayment releases, depreciation, inventory valuation and FX revaluation. - Reconciliations of balance sheet accounts come after the adjustments that affect those balances. - Tax needs final pre-tax profit. - Review — flux analysis against budget and prior month, then controller sign-off — before the period is locked and the pack issued.

Pre-close work shortens the close without cutting corners: prepare recurring journals and accrual templates, confirm intercompany balances, review fixed asset additions and reconcile accounts through day 25, then only the last few days need doing after period end.

The checklist is the control record. Each task has an owner, a reviewer, a due day, a status, a link to evidence (the reconciliation, the journal, the report) and its dependencies. Completion is tracked by tasks, not by averaging percentages.

The critical path is the longest chain of dependent tasks from cut-off to the pack; its length is the close length. To find it, give each task its earliest finish day: it starts the day after the latest of its predecessors finishes and runs for its duration. Late tasks on the critical path are escalated first, and a plan to close faster only works if it shortens that chain — speeding up a task that isn't on it saves nothing, and shortening one chain can make a parallel chain the new critical path. Close metrics worth tracking are days to close, the number and value of post-close adjustments, and which tasks are late repeatedly.

Lock the period in the system when the close is complete, so later entries go into the next open period with a visible correction rather than silently changing reported numbers.