Month-End Close
Also called: monthly close, period close
What is Month-End Close?
The month-end close is the fixed process of finalising a month's books — freezing the period, reconciling every balance to an external source, posting adjusting entries, and producing financial statements you are willing to make decisions from.
Month-end close vs bookkeeping
Bookkeeping records transactions as they happen. The close is the deadline at which recording stops and verification starts. Bookkeeping is continuous; the close is a date.
What a month-end close covers
- Purchase bills and expenses captured in full
- Bank, cash, gateway and aggregator balances reconciled
- Receivables and payables aged and reviewed
- Accruals, prepayments, depreciation and payroll provisions posted
- Closing stock valued against a physical count
- Trial balance, profit and loss statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement produced
How long it should take
Five working days is a reasonable target for an SME with one entity. The value of a close is timeliness, not perfection — numbers finished on the 5th change decisions, numbers finished on the 25th are history.
Frequently asked questions
Five working days for a single-entity SME; 8 to 10 for multi-entity businesses. Consistently past the 15th usually means unreconciled banks or missing purchase bills.