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Master the month end close with clear steps, tips, and tools for a faster, more accurate close. Get practical advice to streamline your financial process.
For many businesses, the month end close is a process held together by manual effort. It involves exporting data from disconnected systems, painstakingly reconciling accounts line-by-line in spreadsheets, and manually creating journal entries. This approach is not only slow and tedious but also incredibly prone to human error, forcing your team to spend more time hunting for discrepancies than analyzing performance. A modern close looks completely different. It’s built on a foundation of seamless integrations and smart automation, creating a single source of truth for your financial data. This guide provides a practical roadmap for bridging that gap and building a more efficient, accurate, and stress-free closing process.
Think of the month-end close as your company’s monthly financial check-up. It’s the process of reviewing, verifying, and finalizing all the financial activities that happened over the past month to create a set of accurate financial reports. While it might sound like a task just for the accounting department, a smooth and timely close impacts the entire business. It provides a clear snapshot of your company's performance, giving you the reliable data you need to make smart, strategic decisions for the month ahead. Understanding what the process involves, who participates, and how it affects your operations is the first step toward turning this monthly routine from a stressful scramble into a strategic advantage.
At its core, the month-end close is the process of putting a period at the end of a financial sentence for the month. Your accounting team wraps up all transactions, ensuring every dollar is accounted for before closing the books. This matters because it’s the source of truth for your business's financial health. An accurate close helps you manage cash flow, prepare for tax season, and maintain audit-ready records. For public companies, it’s also a non-negotiable part of following financial reporting standards. Without it, you’re essentially flying blind, making decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information.
While the accounting team leads the charge, the month-end close is truly a team sport. Accountants are responsible for the heavy lifting: reviewing transactions, reconciling bank accounts and ledgers, recording expenses, and checking revenue and expense accounts for accuracy. However, they rely on information from other departments to get the full picture. Sales might need to provide final commission numbers, while operations may need to report on inventory levels. Getting this done right requires clear communication and collaboration across your entire organization to ensure all financial data is captured correctly.
A slow or messy month-end close can create a significant drag on your business. The process typically takes between five and ten days, and during that time, your team’s focus is on looking backward instead of forward. The speed and accuracy of your close depend heavily on your company’s size, transaction volume, and the accounting systems you use. A streamlined process provides leadership with trustworthy financial reports sooner, enabling quicker, more confident decision-making. Having seamless system integrations is key to shortening this cycle, as it reduces the manual work needed to gather and verify data from different sources.
Closing the books can feel like a huge undertaking, but it’s really just a series of logical steps. Think of it as a monthly financial health check-up for your business. By following a consistent process, you can turn a chaotic scramble into a smooth, predictable routine. This structured approach not only ensures your records are accurate and compliant but also gives you the clear insights you need to make smart decisions. Let’s walk through the core five steps that form the foundation of any solid month-end close.
First things first, you need to round up all the financial data from the month. This means collecting every transaction from all your sources—sales platforms, bank accounts, credit card statements, payroll systems, and expense reports. The goal is to get a complete picture of all the money that moved in and out of the business. But just gathering the data isn't enough; you have to verify it. This is your chance to catch discrepancies early, ensuring the information you’re working with is accurate from the start. Having seamless integrations between your systems can make this step significantly faster and less prone to human error.
Once you have your data, the next step is reconciliation. This is where you play detective, comparing your internal records against external statements to make sure everything matches up. You’ll start with a bank reconciliation, lining up your books with your bank statements to account for every deposit and withdrawal. But don't stop there. You also need to reconcile other key accounts like credit cards, loans, accounts receivable (money owed to you), and accounts payable (money you owe). This process is critical for catching errors, spotting potential fraud, and confirming that the balances on your books are correct and reliable.
With your accounts reconciled, it’s time to make adjustments. Journal entries help you account for financial activities that aren't simple cash transactions. This includes recording accruals, like an electricity bill for the month that you haven't paid yet, and deferrals, such as recognizing only one month's worth of your annual insurance premium. This is also the stage where you handle complex tasks like revenue recognition under ASC 606, ensuring you record revenue when it’s earned, not just when cash is received. These entries are essential for creating financial statements that accurately reflect your company’s performance for the period.
Now for the main event: creating your financial statements. After all the gathering, reconciling, and adjusting, you can finally compile the data into the key reports that tell your company’s financial story. The three core statements you’ll prepare are the Income Statement, which shows your profitability over the month; the Balance Sheet, which provides a snapshot of your assets, liabilities, and equity at the end of the month; and the Statement of Cash Flows, which details how cash moved through your business. These reports are the primary output of the close process and are used by leaders, investors, and lenders to assess business health.
Your financial statements are ready, but your work isn’t quite done. The final—and arguably most important—step is to review and analyze the results. This is where you move beyond just reporting the numbers and start interpreting them. Compare your actual performance to your budget, look for significant variances, and identify trends from previous months. Why was revenue higher than expected? What caused that spike in operating costs? Answering these questions helps you understand what’s driving your business and provides the critical insights you need to plan for the future and make informed strategic decisions.
Even the most organized finance teams can hit a few bumps during the month-end close. It’s a high-pressure time with a lot of moving parts, and small issues can quickly turn into major delays. Recognizing these common roadblocks is the first step toward building a smoother, more predictable process. From juggling deadlines to wrestling with data, these are the challenges that trip up most businesses.
The classic dilemma: too much to do, not enough hands or hours to do it. The month-end close typically takes between five and ten days, and for a small team, that can feel like an eternity. When everyone is stretched thin, it’s easy for tasks to fall through the cracks. Team members might be unsure of their responsibilities or what’s already been completed, leading to duplicated work or missed steps. This isn't a sign of a bad team; it's often a sign that the business is outgrowing its manual processes and needs a more structured workflow to support its people.
Nothing slows down a close faster than bad data. When your financial information is scattered across different systems—your CRM, your payment processor, your ERP—just gathering it is a huge task. You’re left manually exporting spreadsheets and trying to piece together a complete picture. This manual work is not only time-consuming but also a major source of errors. A single copy-paste mistake or a formula error can throw off your numbers, forcing you to spend hours hunting down the discrepancy. A truly efficient close relies on a single source of truth where all your systems are integrated and data flows seamlessly.
When your team isn't on the same page, the close can feel chaotic. A lack of real-time visibility means you’re constantly asking for status updates or trying to figure out who is handling which task. Relying on long email chains and shared spreadsheets for communication often leads to confusion. Someone might be working with an outdated version of a file, or two people might unknowingly work on the same reconciliation. This creates friction and slows everyone down, turning a collaborative process into a series of frustrating hurdles. Clear communication channels are essential for keeping the process moving forward.
Following accounting standards like ASC 606 isn't just about checking a box; it's fundamental to producing trustworthy financial statements. For investors, lenders, and auditors, compliance is non-negotiable. But as regulations evolve and your business grows, staying compliant can become increasingly complex. This is especially true for businesses with subscription models or complex contracts. Manually applying revenue recognition rules is prone to error and can put your business at risk during an audit. Ensuring your process is built around current accounting principles is critical for long-term financial health.
If your team spends most of the close manually entering data, reconciling accounts line-by-line, and creating reports from scratch, you’re dealing with serious bottlenecks. Research shows that over 60% of financial controllers feel their closing processes are still too manual, which explains why a quarter of all companies take 10 days or more to close their books. These repetitive tasks are not just slow; they’re also a drain on morale. Your skilled finance professionals end up acting like data entry clerks instead of strategic partners. Automating these tasks is the key to freeing up your team to focus on analysis and strategic insights.
Closing the books doesn't have to be a monthly fire drill. With a few strategic adjustments, you can transform your month-end close from a source of stress into a smooth, predictable process. It’s all about working smarter, not harder. By creating clear systems and using the right tools, you can get the accurate, timely financial data you need to make better business decisions without the last-minute chaos. These steps will help you build a more efficient closing process that your entire team can rely on.
The first step toward a smoother close is creating consistency. When everyone follows the same steps in the same order every month, you reduce confusion and minimize the chance of errors. Standardizing your financial close processes makes it easier to train new team members and ensures that tasks are performed correctly, no matter who is doing them. More importantly, a consistent workflow is the foundation for effective automation. Once you have a clear, repeatable process, you can identify which steps can be handled by software, freeing up your team for more strategic work.
A detailed month-end close checklist is your best friend. Think of it as the master blueprint for your entire process. A well-organized checklist ensures that no task, big or small, gets overlooked. It should outline every single step, from initial data gathering to the final review. Assign each task to a specific person and set clear deadlines. This simple tool creates accountability and gives everyone a clear view of what needs to be done and when. It also helps you track progress and spot potential bottlenecks before they derail your timeline.
Strong internal controls are the guardrails that keep your financial data accurate and secure. This involves putting procedures in place to prevent and detect errors or fraud. For example, you might require a second person to review journal entries or restrict access to sensitive financial data. The right financial close software can be a huge help here, as it can automate many of these controls for you. These systems can flag unusual transactions, enforce approval workflows, and create an audit trail, making it much easier to catch issues early and ensure the integrity of your financial statements.
How much time does your team spend on manual, repetitive tasks like data entry or basic reconciliations? Automating these activities is one of the most impactful changes you can make to your closing process. Financial close management software uses automation and AI to handle the tedious work, which drastically reduces the risk of human error and speeds everything up. When your team isn't bogged down by manual tasks, they can focus on analysis and strategic planning. If you're ready to see how automation can transform your close, you can schedule a demo to explore your options.
The accounting team can't close the books in a vacuum. You rely on information from sales, operations, and other departments to get a complete financial picture. That's why clear and consistent communication is so important. Make sure every department that handles financial data understands the closing schedule and their role in it. Set up a system for sharing information efficiently, whether it's through a shared dashboard or regular check-in meetings. When all departments work together, the accounting team gets the information they need on time, preventing delays and last-minute scrambles.
Don't wait until the last week of the month to start reconciling your accounts. Tackling reconciliations throughout the month makes the process much more manageable. This practice, often called a "continuous close," helps you identify and resolve discrepancies as they happen instead of letting them pile up. Using accounting software allows you to create a system where team members can complete their assigned tasks on an ongoing basis. This not only makes the month-end close faster but also gives you a more accurate and up-to-date view of your company's financial health at any point in time.
The right software does more than just digitize your checklist; it actively streamlines your entire process. When evaluating options, look for core features like automated reconciliations and robust task management that can handle dependencies. The best financial close software provides a central hub where your team can track progress, assign tasks, and communicate effectively. Think about tools that send automatic digests of outstanding items via email or Slack to keep everyone on track without constant check-ins. The goal is to find a platform that automates repetitive work, giving your team more time to focus on analysis and strategy instead of just ticking boxes. It should fit your workflow, not force you into a new one.
For high-volume businesses, manually calculating and recognizing revenue is one of the biggest bottlenecks in the month-end close. It’s tedious, prone to errors, and makes complying with standards like ASC 606 a serious challenge. This is where automated revenue recognition becomes a game-changer. By automating this critical function, you can ensure accuracy and consistency while drastically cutting down the time it takes to close your books. The right solution organizes the entire process in one place, applying the correct rules to each transaction automatically. This not only leads to a more efficient and stress-free close but also provides the accurate, compliant data you need to make sound business decisions.
Waiting until the end of the month to discover financial discrepancies is a recipe for stress and long nights. Modern accounting tech shifts this process from reactive to proactive with real-time analytics. Instead of a month-end scramble, you can monitor transactions and detect issues as they happen. An automated solution that performs reconciliation continuously can send your team alerts the moment a problem arises. This allows you to investigate and resolve issues immediately, long before they can derail your close. Having access to up-to-the-minute financial data also empowers you to make faster, more informed strategic decisions based on the current health of your business, not on last month’s news.
Your financial data doesn’t live in a single place. It’s spread across your ERP, CRM, billing platforms, and bank accounts. A truly effective close process depends on bringing all this information together seamlessly. That’s why robust integrations are non-negotiable for any modern accounting software. By connecting all your systems, you eliminate the need for manual data exports and imports, which are major sources of errors and delays. This creates a single source of truth for your financial data, ensuring everyone is working with the same accurate numbers. When your tools talk to each other, your team can spend less time chasing data and more time analyzing it.
Staying compliant and audit-ready is a major pressure point during the month-end close. The right technology can significantly lighten this load. Look for software with built-in compliance features, such as automated error detection and exception reporting, which help you identify and correct issues early on. These tools create a clear, unchangeable audit trail for every journal entry and reconciliation, making it simple to show auditors exactly how you arrived at your numbers. This not only helps you pass audits with confidence but also ensures your financial statements are consistently accurate and adhere to accounting standards. If you want to see how automation can strengthen your compliance, you can schedule a demo to see it in action.
A chaotic month-end close often comes down to one thing: a lack of a clear, shared calendar. When your team doesn’t have a roadmap, deadlines become suggestions, tasks get missed, and stress levels go way up. Creating a streamlined close calendar isn’t just about plotting dates; it’s about building a predictable, efficient rhythm that your entire team can rely on. By turning the process into a well-oiled machine, you give your team the structure they need to work confidently and collaboratively. A solid plan transforms the close from a monthly fire drill into a smooth, manageable process. Here’s how you can build a calendar that sets your team up for success.
The first step is to map out your entire close process from start to finish. Most companies take between five and ten business days to close their books, but this can vary depending on your transaction volume and the complexity of your operations. Start with your final reporting deadline and work backward, assigning a specific day for every major task. For example, Day 1 might be for closing sub-ledgers, Day 3 for bank reconciliations, and Day 5 for initial variance analysis. This creates a clear timeline that everyone can see and follow. It removes the guesswork and helps your team understand how their individual tasks fit into the bigger picture, which is a core principle of strong financial operations.
A timeline is only effective if everyone knows their part. For every single task on your calendar, assign a specific owner. This simple step creates accountability and ensures that nothing falls through the cracks because someone thought someone else was handling it. This is also where cross-departmental communication becomes key. Your accounting team often relies on data from sales, marketing, or operations to complete their work. Make sure you build relationships with these teams so they understand what you need and why it’s important. When other departments are part of the process, they’re much more likely to provide accurate data on time. Using tools with seamless integrations can also make this data exchange much smoother.
Once your plan is in place, you need a way to monitor it. A shared spreadsheet can work in a pinch, but using a project management tool or specialized close management software provides much better visibility. A centralized system allows everyone on the team to see the status of each task in real time, identify potential bottlenecks before they become major problems, and understand how their work impacts others. This is where automation can be a huge help. Instead of manually ticking off boxes, an automated system can track the completion of repetitive tasks, freeing your team to focus on more strategic analysis and review.
The close process shouldn’t be a mad dash to the finish line. Instead, build in specific checkpoints for review and quality control. Schedule a mid-close meeting to address any issues that have popped up and ensure everything is on track. Once the preliminary financial statements are prepared, schedule a final review session with key stakeholders. This is your chance to catch errors, ask questions, and analyze the results together. Sharing these reports with department heads or leadership for their feedback ensures accuracy and alignment across the business. When you can schedule a demo of your financials with clean, reliable data, these review meetings become much more productive.
Finally, write everything down. Create a master checklist or a standard operating procedure (SOP) that details every step of your month-end close process. This document should outline each task, its owner, the deadline, and any specific instructions or resources needed to complete it. Having clear, written steps ensures consistency and accuracy every single month, and it makes onboarding new team members much easier. Think of it as a living document for your team—a single source of truth that you can refine and improve over time. This commitment to process is what helps great companies build scalable operations that support long-term growth.
Finishing your month-end close is one thing, but knowing if it was a successful close is another. A great close isn't just about getting it done; it's about doing it quickly, accurately, and in a way that provides real value to the business. When your close process is efficient and reliable, you give leaders the clear financial picture they need to make smart, timely decisions. Without measuring your process, you’re just guessing. By tracking specific metrics, you can move from simply completing the close to continuously improving it. This turns a routine accounting task into a strategic asset for your company. The key is to look at a few core areas: speed, quality, and overall efficiency.
The most straightforward KPI for your month-end close is, of course, the time it takes to complete. Most companies aim to close their books within five to ten days. Speed matters because the faster you get accurate financials, the sooner your leadership team can act on them. According to one report, 62% of companies that finish their close in six days or less feel their financial information is timely, compared to just 39% of those who take longer. Another critical KPI to watch is the number of post-close adjustments. If you’re constantly making corrections after the books are "closed," it’s a sign that your initial process lacks accuracy.
A fast close is useless if the numbers are wrong. The ultimate goal of the month-end close is to produce trustworthy financial information that can guide your business strategy. Quality can feel subjective, but you can measure it by tracking the number and significance of errors found during reconciliations. Are certain accounts always off? Do you spend days hunting down tiny discrepancies? These are signs of quality issues. Another metric is the volume of manual journal entries. A high number of manual adjustments can indicate that your systems aren't capturing data correctly, which introduces a greater risk of human error.
To understand how your process stacks up, it helps to look at industry benchmarks. While many companies aim for that 5-to-10-day window, about 25% take 10 days or more to close their books. If you fall into that latter group, it’s a good sign that there are opportunities to become more efficient. A major culprit behind slow closes is manual work; in fact, 62% of financial controllers report that their closing processes are still too manual. Reducing manual data entry and reconciliation through smart system integrations is one of the fastest ways to improve your team's efficiency and shorten your close cycle.
Analyzing performance isn't about placing blame; it's about identifying and removing roadblocks for your team. Regularly review your close process to see where bottlenecks occur. Are approvals holding things up? Is one person or department consistently overwhelmed? Use your KPIs to pinpoint which tasks take the longest and ask your team why. Often, the issue isn't the person but the process. By automating repetitive tasks like data collection and account reconciliations, you free up your team to focus on more strategic analysis rather than tedious manual work. This not only speeds up the close but also makes their jobs more engaging.
The traditional month-end close—a frantic scramble of spreadsheets, manual entries, and late nights—is quickly becoming a relic of the past. If your process still feels like a monthly fire drill, it’s time for an upgrade. Modernizing your close isn’t just about getting it done faster; it’s about improving accuracy, reducing stress on your team, and transforming your financial data from a historical record into a strategic asset.
By embracing modern tools and a forward-thinking mindset, you can turn the close into a smooth, predictable, and even insightful process. This involves shifting to cloud-based solutions that foster collaboration, adopting a continuous accounting model to eliminate the end-of-month rush, and implementing smart automation to handle the heavy lifting. The result is a finance function that operates with real-time data, empowering your business to make better decisions. But technology alone isn’t enough—it’s equally important to invest in your team, ensuring they have the skills and support to thrive in a modernized environment.
Moving your financial operations to the cloud is one of the most impactful changes you can make. Cloud-based accounting and financial close software gives your team the ability to access critical data and collaborate from anywhere, at any time. This eliminates the version control nightmares of shared spreadsheets and the bottlenecks of on-premise systems. Modern financial close management software is designed to optimize the process through automation, giving you a centralized hub for all close-related activities. This means everyone is working from the same set of data, communication is streamlined, and you have a clear, auditable trail of every action taken. It’s a foundational step toward a more efficient and secure close.
Why cram a month’s worth of work into a few stressful days? The continuous accounting model challenges this outdated approach by embedding close-related tasks into daily and weekly workflows. Instead of waiting until month-end to reconcile accounts, an automated solution can perform these checks continuously. This approach allows you to monitor and detect issues in real-time, sending alerts when discrepancies arise so your team can address them immediately. This proactive method prevents small issues from snowballing into major problems and keeps your books in a "soft-close" state throughout the month. It transforms the close from a reactive scramble into a calm, organized review.
Automation is the key to freeing your team from tedious, repetitive tasks so they can focus on high-value analysis. Automating the month-end close can bring significant benefits, but it requires a thoughtful strategy. Start by identifying the biggest time-sinks in your current process—think manual data entry, bank reconciliations, and standard journal entries. By implementing a solution like HubiFi to handle these tasks, you not only speed up the process but also reduce the risk of human error. Once you’ve invested in automating your financial close process, it’s crucial to ensure the changes stick by providing your team with the right tools and training to manage the new workflow effectively.
In today’s business environment, waiting weeks for financial reports is a competitive disadvantage. Modernizing your close process unlocks the power of real-time financials. With automated data collection and reporting, you can get an accurate picture of your company’s performance at any point in the month. Real-time dashboards and automated reporting make sharing accounting records fast and reliable, which helps speed up the review and approval process. This immediate visibility allows leaders to make quicker, more informed strategic decisions, manage cash flow more effectively, and pivot when necessary. It changes finance from a backward-looking function to a forward-looking strategic partner.
Introducing new technology and processes is only half the battle. To truly modernize your close, you need to invest in your team. Proper training ensures that everyone understands the new workflows, knows how to use the tools effectively, and feels confident in their roles. Establishing a consistent process and clear documentation is essential for a smooth transition. Just as a consistent voice and tone create a cohesive user experience, a standardized approach to the close ensures everyone is on the same page. By empowering your team with the right skills and knowledge, you guarantee a higher return on your technology investment and build a more resilient and capable finance department.
A great month-end close process isn’t static; it evolves with your business. Getting the books closed is the goal, but how you get there matters just as much. Creating a culture of continuous improvement means you’re always looking for ways to make the process smoother, faster, and more accurate. It’s about shifting from a reactive mindset—fixing problems as they pop up—to a proactive one where you’re constantly refining your approach.
This isn’t about a massive overhaul every month. Instead, it’s about making small, consistent adjustments that add up to significant gains in efficiency and accuracy over time. When your team sees improvement as part of the routine, they become more engaged and invested in the outcome. This approach reduces end-of-month stress, minimizes errors, and transforms the close from a dreaded chore into a well-oiled machine that provides timely, reliable financial insights. By embedding this mindset into your operations, you ensure your financial processes scale effectively as your company grows.
Your business isn't the same as it was six months ago, so why should your close process be? Set a recurring date on the calendar—quarterly is a great starting point—to formally review your entire month-end workflow. Look at your checklist, your timeline, and the tools you’re using. Ask critical questions: Are any steps redundant? Are there new compliance rules we need to account for? Is a specific task consistently causing a bottleneck? A regular review ensures your process remains relevant and efficient, adapting to new team members, systems, or business activities before they become major problems.
The people who are deep in the weeds of the month-end close are your best source of information for what’s working and what isn’t. After each close, hold a brief debrief meeting. Keep it simple: What went well? What was challenging? What’s one thing we could change to make next month better? Creating this open forum encourages your team to share ideas and frustrations constructively. This collaborative approach not only leads to practical improvements but also makes your team feel heard and valued, which is crucial for morale during a high-pressure period.
Manual data entry and repetitive tasks are the biggest time sinks during the month-end close. They’re also prime opportunities for human error. Embracing technology isn't about replacing your talented team; it's about freeing them up to focus on analysis and strategy instead of tedious reconciliation. Automated revenue recognition software, for example, can handle complex calculations and journal entries in a fraction of the time it would take manually. Look for tools that offer seamless integrations with your existing accounting software, ERP, and CRM to ensure data flows smoothly without constant intervention.
A smooth close process depends on more than just the accounting team. It requires clear communication and collaboration across multiple departments. Invest time in training other teams—like sales and operations—on why their timely and accurate data submissions are so critical. When they understand the downstream impact of their work, they’re more likely to be proactive partners. For your finance team, focus on developing skills in data analysis and using your financial software to its full potential. The more your team understands the big picture, the more valuable insights they can provide.
Continuous improvement is a mindset, not a one-time project. Encourage your team to always be on the lookout for opportunities to optimize. This could be as simple as creating a new template to standardize a report or reorganizing a shared folder for easier access to documents. The goal is to find and eliminate friction wherever it exists. By constantly asking, "Is there a better way to do this?" you’ll uncover small inefficiencies that, once fixed, contribute to a faster and more accurate close. If you're ready to tackle major bottlenecks, see how automation can help streamline your most complex tasks.
My close takes way longer than 10 days. What's the first step I should take to shorten it? The best place to start is by mapping out your current process. Create a detailed checklist of every single task, who is responsible for it, and how long it typically takes. This exercise will immediately highlight your biggest bottlenecks. Often, you'll find that the majority of your time is spent on manual, repetitive work like data entry and reconciliations. Once you've identified these time-consuming steps, you can focus on standardizing and automating them first for the biggest impact.
We're a small team with a tight budget. Is investing in automation software really worth it for us? It's a common concern, but think of it less as an expense and more as a strategic investment. Your team's time is your most valuable resource. If they're spending days on manual tasks that software could do in minutes, you're losing out on their ability to perform the strategic analysis that actually helps grow the business. Good software reduces the risk of costly human errors and scales with you, so you won't have to completely overhaul your process again in a year.
What's the difference between a "continuous close" and a traditional month-end close? A traditional close is like cramming for a final exam—all the work is packed into a stressful period at the end of the month. A continuous close is more like doing your homework every night. Instead of waiting to reconcile everything at once, tasks are automated and performed on a daily or weekly basis. This allows you to catch and fix errors as they happen, which means the final "close" at the end of the month becomes a much faster and calmer process of review and analysis.
My biggest headache is getting accurate information from other departments on time. How can I fix this? This is a classic communication challenge, and it's rarely solved with more emails. The key is to make the process as easy as possible for everyone involved. Start by explaining why you need the information and how it impacts the entire company's ability to make decisions. Then, work on the system itself. Integrating your financial software with other systems, like your CRM, can automate much of this data transfer, removing the need for manual reports and follow-ups.
How do I know if my close was actually "successful" beyond just getting it done on time? Speed is important, but accuracy is everything. A truly successful close produces financial statements that you can trust without hesitation. A great indicator of quality is the number of post-close adjustments you have to make. If you're frequently reopening the books to fix errors, it's a sign that your process needs stronger controls. The ultimate goal is to produce reliable data that gives your leadership team the confidence to make strategic decisions for the month ahead.
Former Root, EVP of Finance/Data at multiple FinTech startups
Jason Kyle Berwanger: An accomplished two-time entrepreneur, polyglot in finance, data & tech with 15 years of expertise. Builder, practitioner, leader—pioneering multiple ERP implementations and data solutions. Catalyst behind a 6% gross margin improvement with a sub-90-day IPO at Root insurance, powered by his vision & platform. Having held virtually every role from accountant to finance systems to finance exec, he brings a rare and noteworthy perspective in rethinking the finance tooling landscape.
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