Month-end close checklist: where AI helps at each step, and what to check

How to use this checklist

Adapt it to your business: add the accounts and entities you have, and drop what doesn't apply. Give every task an owner and a due day, such as business day 1 to 5, so the close runs to a calendar rather than to memory. Each step below lists the tasks, where AI helps, and the check that makes the step reliable.

The checklist

1. Before month-end: set the calendar

• Publish the close calendar with owners and due days.
• Send cutoff reminders: expense reports, vendor invoices, timesheets.
• Carry forward the open items from last month's close.

2. Cash: bank and card accounts

• Download statements for every bank and credit card account.
• Record and code the month's bank activity.
• Reconcile each account to its statement.

3. Revenue and receivables

• Confirm every invoice for the month is issued and recorded.
• Apply cash receipts to the right invoices.
• Review the receivables aging and deferred revenue.

4. Expenses and payables

• Record all vendor invoices received for the month.
• Accrue for goods and services received but not yet invoiced.
• Amortize prepaid expenses.

5. Payroll, fixed assets and other accruals

• Agree the payroll journal to the payroll register.
• Record depreciation, additions and disposals.
• Book other accruals, such as interest, utilities and bonuses.

6. Balance sheet reconciliations

• Reconcile every balance sheet account to its support.
• Investigate any unexplained difference, however small.
• Have each reconciliation reviewed and signed off.

7. Review the results

• Run a flux analysis on the trial balance.
• Compare results with budget or forecast.
• Post any correcting entries the review turns up.

8. Report and lock the period

• Prepare the financial statements and the management pack.
• Lock the period in the accounting system.
• Record what went wrong and what took longest, for next month.

Where AI saves the most time, and where it doesn't belong

Across the close, AI earns its place in four kinds of work:

• Reading and sorting: bank exports, invoices and statements.
• Matching long lists: bank to ledger, vendor statements to payables.
• First drafts: commentary, emails and support notes.
• Turning notes into lists: last month's issues into this month's tasks.

It doesn't belong in the decisions: setting an estimate, approving an entry, or signing off a reconciliation. Those stay with a named person, and the AI policy template has a clause you can use to say so.

A prompt to start each close

Here are last month's close notes and open items:
[notes]

Turn them into this month's close checklist: one line per task, with the owner and due day from the notes. Put the open items carried forward in a separate list. Don't add tasks that aren't in the notes; if something looks missing, list it as a question at the end.

The last instruction matters. A checklist that quietly gains or loses a task is worse than no checklist, because people trust it.

Close problems AI won't fix

Some of the slowest parts of a close are process problems, and adding AI doesn't change them:

• vendor invoices that arrive after the cutoff because nobody asked for them sooner;
• entries waiting on approvals from people who don't know the close calendar;
• a suspense or clearing account that's never fully reconciled, so every month starts with old differences;
• the same correcting entry posted every month because the underlying cause was never fixed.

Fix these first. AI makes a well-run close faster; it doesn't make a messy one reliable.

Keep a close log

After each close, write down what slowed it down, which reconciliations had problems, and what the AI got wrong. Three months of notes show where the time really goes, which steps are worth automating further, and which AI outputs need the closest checking.