For many Chief Financial Officers, controllers and indeed, many other accounting professionals, Month End Close is a phrase that evokes images of long hours, painstaking detail, and days of extra work on top of regular operations. And on top of that, it often takes longer than it should.
In 2013, KPMG released analysis indicating that perhaps as little as 10% of Monthly Close activities add value to the firm and another 40% are deemed necessary but redundant.
You might be able to better identify some of the waste in your monthly close process if you can identify with any of the following:
- I don’t know what needs to be done
- I don’t know the status of various parts of the close
- I can’t find what has been completed - it is in people’s email, on their PCs, etc. or not organized properly on the share drive
- When I find them, reconciliations and other tasks aren’t standardized
- When I find them, reconciliations and other tasks contain errors because they have not been reviewed or approved
- Our month end close process takes too long relative to how much we actually have to do
- Our reconciliations are done, but then adjusting entries are made and the reconciliations aren’t updated to match
- During month end, some of our people are swamped and others seem to always finish quickly.
To assist you in locating this waste, Carrtegra has put together this checklist “10 Steps to Improve your Month-End Close” of things that can be done to help speed up your month end close.
Bryce’s areas of expertise include financial analysis, process analysis and documentation, and analysis and design of information systems. Bryce has broad-based experience that includes three years of information systems and database administration, five years in treasury investment accounting, and three years of management consulting. Bryce is licensed as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), and is certified as a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), a BlackLine Implementation Professional, and a Caseware IDEA Data Analyst.