Blog · Board and management reporting · Finance and FP&A teams
A month-end close checklist for US finance teams, ordered by working day with an owner and evidence for each task: cut-off, accruals and prepaid expenses, reconciliations, trial balance review and the reporting package. With a worked bank reconciliation, the Excel layout with WORKDAY due dates, and what makes a close faster.
A month-end close checklist lists every task needed to finalize the month's books, in order, each with an owner, a working-day deadline and the evidence that it is done. The core is the same everywhere: cut-off of sales and purchases, accruals and prepaid expenses, depreciation, reconciliations, intercompany, a review of the trial balance, and the management reporting package. Most mid-sized companies close in about five to ten working days.
For public companies the close is also a deadline and a control. The quarterly report on Form 10-Q is due 40 days after quarter end for large accelerated and accelerated filers and 45 days for all other registrants, and the third month of each quarter's close feeds it. Under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, management assesses internal control over financial reporting each year, and the SEC's 2007 guidance on that assessment names "controls over the period-end financial reporting process", including the recording of journal entries in the general ledger, among the controls to evaluate. A checklist with owners, reviewers and evidence is how those controls are run and shown.
WD is the working day after month end; WD −2 is two working days before it.
| Day | Task | Owner | Depends on | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD −2 | Confirm cut-off dates with sales and purchasing | Financial controller | — | Email or memo with the dates |
| WD 1 | Post final sales invoices and credit memos | Billing | Cut-off dates | Billing register agreed to the ledger |
| WD 1 | Post supplier invoices received | Accounts payable | Cut-off dates | AP register |
| WD 1 | Run payroll journal | Payroll | Payroll run | Payroll register |
| WD 2 | Accrue goods received not invoiced; amortize prepaid expenses | GL accountant | AP posted | Accrual schedule, prepaid schedule |
| WD 2 | Depreciation run | Fixed assets | Additions posted | Fixed asset register |
| WD 2 | Bank reconciliations | Treasury | Bank statements | Signed reconciliation |
| WD 3 | Receivables and payables ledgers reconciled to control accounts; intercompany matched; inventory reconciled | GL team | WD 1-2 postings | Reconciliations with reviewer sign-off |
| WD 4 | Trial balance review against prior month and budget; lines over threshold explained | Financial controller | All reconciliations | Flux analysis with commentary |
| WD 5 | Management reporting package and variance commentary issued | FP&A | Reviewed trial balance | Package, period locked |
Each row depends on the ones above it. The day a task slips, the row it feeds slips too, which is why "depends on" is a column and not a footnote. The period end the calendar runs from is a choice of its own: a calendar month or a 4-4-5 fiscal period.
A reconciliation proves that two independent records of the same balance agree. For cash, the bank statement and the general ledger each get adjusted for what the other has not yet recorded, and both must arrive at the same figure.
Bank reconciliation at May 31:
| Bank side | USD | Book side | USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balance per bank statement | 1,248,300 | Balance per books | 1,226,000 |
| Add: deposits in transit | 42,500 | Less: bank fees not yet recorded | 1,450 |
| Less: outstanding payments | 65,800 | Add: interest received not yet recorded | 450 |
| Adjusted bank balance | 1,225,000 | Adjusted book balance | 1,225,000 |
Adjusted bank balance = Bank statement balance + Deposits in transit − Outstanding payments
Adjusted book balance = Balance per books − Unrecorded charges + Unrecorded receipts
Difference = Adjusted bank − Adjusted book, which must be 0
Bank side: 1,248,300 + 42,500 − 65,800 = 1,225,000. Book side: 1,226,000 − 1,450 + 450 = 1,225,000. The difference is zero. The $1,450 of fees and $450 of interest are posted to the ledger before it closes; the deposits in transit and outstanding payments should clear on the June statement. If they do not, they are no longer timing items, they are errors. The same logic, two sides that must reach one figure, sits behind every control total.
The other month-end reconciliations follow the same pattern: receivables and payables subledgers against their control accounts, intercompany balances against each other, the fixed asset register against the ledger, inventory, payroll liabilities, tax accounts, and suspense or clearing accounts, which should be at zero.
US GAAP books are kept on the accrual basis: revenue when earned, expense when incurred, whatever the cash did. Accrual vs cash accounting covers the difference. At month end that means three kinds of entry:
Most accruals are set to reverse on the first day of the next month, so when the real invoice arrives it is not counted twice. Cut-off works the other way: credit memos and returns dated in June for May sales need a decision on which month they belong to, covered in credit memos and returns in revenue measures.
Once reconciliations are signed, the controller reviews the trial balance:
The explanations written here become the variance commentary in the reporting package; variance analysis covers how to split each movement into its causes.
One row per task, as an Excel Table named Tasks:
| Column | Content |
|---|---|
| A ID | C-01, C-02, ... |
| B Task | One action, one verb |
| C Owner | One person, not a team |
| D Reviewer | A different person from the owner |
| E Due WD | Working-day number: −2, 1, 2, ... |
| F Due date | Formula below |
| G Status | Not started, In progress, Done |
| H Date done | Entered when done |
| I Evidence | Link to the reconciliation or schedule |
With any date in the closing month in B1 and a range named Holidays listing the federal holidays the company observes, the due date for a task is:
=WORKDAY(EOMONTH($B$1,0),E5,Holidays)
WORKDAY counts working days forward from the month end, or backward for a negative number, skipping weekends and the listed holidays. For May 2026, month end is Sunday, May 31, so WD 1 is Monday, June 1, WD 5 is Friday, June 5, and WD −2 is Thursday, May 28.
Progress by owner, with owner names in A2 downward on a summary sheet:
=COUNTIFS(Tasks[Owner],A2,Tasks[Status],"Done")/COUNTIF(Tasks[Owner],A2)
Keep a column for the hours each task took. Without it, nobody can say which tasks make the close long.
Days to close is the number of working days from period end to the day the ledger is locked. For a reference point, APQC's benchmark of more than 2,300 organizations, reported by CFO.com in 2018, put the median at 6.4 calendar days from running the trial balance to completing consolidated statements, with the top quarter at 4.8 days or less and the bottom quarter at 10 or more. It measures a narrower span than the full close, so compare your own days to close with your own last six months first.
What shortens it:
Covirage does not close the books. Once the ledger is locked, the reporting package is the next bottleneck: Covirage's tools compute its tables from your ledger exports and check that they reconcile, and the external AI model drafts the commentary and never does the arithmetic. See how finance teams get the package out the day the ledger closes, from the exports they already have. For the early read before the close finishes, see flash report; for the pack itself, the management accounts template.
It is the set of steps accountants follow after each month ends to make the books complete and accurate: record all transactions, post accruals and adjustments, reconcile accounts, review the trial balance, and produce management reports. It ends when the period is locked.
Many mid-sized companies take five to ten working days; efficient teams close in three to five. APQC's benchmark, reported in 2018, put the median at 6.4 calendar days from trial balance to consolidated statements. The right target is steady improvement on your own current days to close.
Bank accounts, receivables and payables ledgers against control accounts, intercompany balances, fixed asset register against the ledger, inventory, payroll liabilities, tax accounts, and any suspense or clearing accounts, which should be cleared to zero.
Year-end close repeats the monthly steps and adds year-only work: physical inventory counts, a full review of reserves and allowances, the income tax provision, audit preparation and closing the income statement accounts to retained earnings. A clean monthly close makes the year end much shorter.