A month end close checklist a small accounting firm can run every period

One row per client per period. Columns are the steps below. Each cell has an owner, a date, and a stop rule. If a step cannot finish, you park it with a date. You do not hide it inside a Slack thread.

Publication 583 still wants a complete set of books that clearly shows income, deductions and credits, plus supporting documents. Electronic records have to meet the same bar as paper. (Publication 583) A close that cannot point at the statement, the receipt, or the decision is not closed. It is a draft with a send button.

• The board is the file. If it is not on the board, it did not happen.
• Chasing sits on the board as step 1, not as a side job the bookkeeper does between coding.
• Locking the period is the last cell. It is not a courtesy you skip when Friday is busy.

Run them in this order on every file. Skipping recon to "get the pack out" is how you send a profit and loss that will move next week.

In QuickBooks Online, reconciling means matching the ledger to the statement until the difference is $0.00, then finishing so QuickBooks stores a reconciliation report. (Reconcile an account) In Xero, matching statement lines is one job. Reconciling and closing the period is a second job, and you cannot close the period until the opening and closing statement balances match and every included transaction is reconciled. (Reconcile and close a period) The page order for step 11 is in the monthly reporting package. The emails for step 1 are in chasing bookkeeping receipts.

A six person firm can split this without a meeting. A two person firm still names the roles, even when the same person wears two of them.

If the reviewer is also the bookkeeper, still mark the review cell. The point of the cell is that you stopped and looked. It is not a second login.

Illustrative. Forty monthly bookkeeping clients, cash basis, close promised on business day 10. Two bookkeepers, one admin, one reviewer, owner on tax, one person on new work.

Automation belongs on step 1 and on applying known bank rules. The reviewer still decides whether the $2,100 supply house charge is a tool or an asset. That split is the point of the board.

Cash files still reconcile. They still need receipts for the items that are not obvious from the bank text. They still need a reviewer on owner draws, loan proceeds and anything that might be personal.

Accrual files add step 9 in a real way: bills dated in the period, invoices dated in the period, prepaid and deferred items. Do not pretend a cash board is an accrual board by renaming the pack. Write the basis on the cover of the pack every month so the owner does not compare a cash profit and loss to a bank balance and decide you are wrong.

• State the basis on the cover. Cash or accrual. The month. The accounts in scope.
• If the engagement is cash and the owner wants unpaid bills on the pack, that is a scope change. Put it in writing.
• If payroll is out of scope, step 10 is skipped on purpose, and the cover says so.

Locking a period that still has a named break trains the client to ignore the missing list. Refuse in these cases:

• A bank or card in scope has no statement and no feed for the period
• The recon difference is not $0.00 and nobody has written what the difference is
• An owner draw, loan, or large new vendor sits uncoded
• The client told you a receipt is coming and you posted the expense as if you already had it

Send the pack with a cover that lists the parked items and the date you will look again. That is still a close of sorts. It is an honest one. A locked period with a silent hole is worse.

Download the month end close checklist. One sheet. The twelve steps, owner, stop rule, a parked column, and a row you can copy for each client period. Fill dates from the recon report and the sent folder, not from memory.

Step 1 is the cell that usually goes red first. The tax season operator keeps that missing list current and drafts the follow ups. Your staff still approve what goes out.