Month-End Close Checklist for Bookkeepers

A clean month-end close depends less on your reconciliation skills than on what your clients send you. Missing statements, unexplained transactions and receipts that show up three months late are what turn a two-hour close into a two-week one.

This month-end close checklist is built for bookkeepers and accounting firms working with small business clients. It covers what to collect, what to reconcile and what to deliver, in the order you'll actually do it.

Week one: collect from the client

Send your monthly request on the first business day of the month. The sooner it goes out, the sooner you can start.

Statements

• Bank statements for every account without a working bank feed
• Credit card statements for every card used by the business
• Loan and line of credit statements showing principal, interest and balance
• Merchant and payment processor payout reports, such as Stripe, Square, Shopify or PayPal

Supporting documents

• Receipts or invoices for purchases above your materiality threshold
• Bills received but not yet paid
• Invoices issued to customers, if they aren't created in the accounting software
• Payroll reports from the payroll provider
• Documents for any major purchase, such as equipment or vehicles
• New contracts, leases or loan agreements

Client answers

• Explanations for uncategorized or unusual transactions
• Owner contributions and withdrawals
• Transfers between accounts that you can't match

Batch your questions into a single list instead of sending them one at a time. A client will answer ten questions in one sitting far more reliably than ten separate emails.

Week two: reconcile and review

Reconciliations

• Reconcile every bank account to its statement
• Reconcile every credit card account
• Reconcile loan balances to lender statements
• Reconcile payment processor clearing accounts, confirming payouts match deposits
• Review and clear old uncleared items

Receivables and payables

• Review the accounts receivable aging and flag overdue customers
• Apply customer payments to the correct invoices
• Review the accounts payable aging and confirm bills are entered

Payroll

• Match payroll journal entries to provider reports
• Confirm payroll tax liabilities and payments

Adjustments

• Record accruals for significant expenses incurred but not billed
• Record prepaid expenses and their monthly amortization
• Record depreciation, if you book it monthly
• Record sales tax collected and remitted, where applicable
• Update inventory balances if the client tracks inventory

Week three: finalize and deliver

• Review the profit and loss against prior months and look for anything out of pattern
• Review the balance sheet for negative balances or accounts that shouldn't carry a balance
• Confirm the uncategorized and suspense accounts are at zero
• Lock the period in the accounting software to prevent accidental changes
• Send the client their reports, with a short summary of what changed and anything that needs their attention

Common month-end bottlenecks and how to fix them

The statement that never arrives

Many clients have at least one account without a bank feed, often a secondary card or an old savings account. Put it on the monthly request by name, every month, and follow up until it becomes a habit. Better still, help the client connect the feed.

The pile of uncategorized transactions

If you send questions once a month, the client has to remember purchases from weeks ago. Sending questions weekly, or giving clients a simple way to add notes as transactions come through, gets you better answers faster.

Receipts that trickle in

Set a clear rule for which receipts you need, typically anything above a set amount, and give clients one place to send them. Receipts scattered across email threads and text messages are nearly impossible to match.

Wrong or partial documents

A statement for the wrong month, or the first page of a five-page report, stalls reconciliation just as much as nothing at all. Check documents when they arrive, not when you sit down to use them.

Set a close calendar and share it

Clients meet deadlines they know about. Give each client a simple calendar: documents due on the 5th, questions answered by the 10th, reports delivered by the 15th. Include it in your client onboarding and repeat it in every monthly request.

Automate the collection step

The reconciliation work is where your skill adds value. Chasing statements isn't. Correctdocs sends each client one secure link listing what you need, checks every upload to confirm it's the right document for the right period, and follows up by text and email until everything is in. Your close can start as soon as the last document is in, not after weeks of chasing.

Correctdocs is in early access. The first 10 US accounting, bookkeeping and tax firms get a free 30-day pilot on real client requests. Request early access.