Review month end before closing the period
Review the month’s open balances, posted sources and reports so the Finance owner can decide whether the period is ready to close.
Review month end before closing the period
Review the month’s open balances, posted sources and reports so the Finance owner can decide whether the period is ready to close.
Before you start: Know the entity, month-end cutoff and reporting currency. Have access to the month’s source documents and complete bank statements. This is a review workflow, not the period-closing command.
Steps
1. Open the month’s Finance → Invoices → Invoices and Vendor bills → Vendor bills records. Check that delivered customer work and accepted supplier charges are represented once, with correct dates and totals. Resolve incomplete drafts through their normal review workflows rather than recreating them.
2. Open Receivables and Payables. Review each material remaining balance against the exact customer invoice or supplier bill, including any recorded allocations and due dates. A payment amount elsewhere does not prove it was allocated to that item.
3. Review employee claims and relevant prepayments or recognition adjustments. Distinguish the original expense or asset from its later reimbursement or recognition. Before preparing a manual adjustment, check whether a source journal or recognition event already recorded the same amount and period.
4. Open Finance → Cash → Bank transactions and Reconciliation. Compare the same cash account, currency and cutoff with the statement. Follow up supported timing differences and missing entries; do not add a miscellaneous adjustment just to force a zero difference.
5. Open Finance → Accounting → Journals → Journals and General ledger. Trace significant or unusual balances to exact posted journal references and source documents. Check the accounting date, not just the creation or posting timestamp.
6. Open Finance → Administration → Reports and select the Trial balance. Review account balances and totals, then use Profit & loss with the month’s Date range applied through OK. Review the Balance sheet with its displayed as-of scope. Confirm the scope before interpreting any result.
7. Compare the reports with the underlying receivables, payables, cash and adjustment checks. Explain material differences or unresolved items to the Finance owner using the actual records. Keep any outstanding correction separate from the report totals currently shown.
8. When the review is resolved, hand the period to the responsible closer under your organisation’s closing procedure. The Close button on a detail panel only dismisses the panel; it is not an accounting-period close.
Expected result
The Finance owner has a clear view of the month’s balances and unresolved items and can make the period-close decision using the actual records.
Common pitfalls
- Equal trial-balance totals or a zero bank difference do not prove completeness. Missing or duplicated transactions can still require investigation.
- Do not post a second source transaction to make a report match an expected number. Check report scope and original journals first.
Continue learning
In this series: Manage business finances — guide 15 of 15.
Turn what you learned into the way the team works.
Mark this lesson complete once the workflow exists in your workspace—not simply when you reach the bottom.