AI Month-End Close Checklist
Describe your team and close window. Get a day by day checklist with owners and blockers.
Nothing sends until you start, and you can change anything afterwards.
What you get
- Text in the chat Copy it wherever you need it. Keep chatting to adjust the tone, length, or wording.
Templates
Small business month-end close checklist
- 36 tasks from pre-close to day five, each with a due time, an owner, its dependencies, and a status
- Pre-close: send the close calendar, confirm cutoff, run a preliminary bank rec, review open POs
- Day 1: bank rec, cash entries, payroll, depreciation, prepaids, and AP accruals
- Day 2: revenue and deferred revenue, remaining accruals, AR and AP subledger recs
- Day 3: balance sheet recs, adjusting entries, the preliminary trial balance and flux analysis
- Day 4: tax accrual, soft close, draft statements, and management review
- Day 5: hard close by noon, lock the period, send the reporting package by 3 PM
- Owners: Controller 13 tasks, Senior Accountant 11, Staff Accountant 12
Ecommerce month-end close checklist
- The accountant owns the books, payouts, bank, and sales tax; the ops person owns orders, refunds, and counts
- Pre-close: the payout schedule, a cycle count of high-value items, open chargebacks and returns
- Day 1: export processor sales, fees, refunds, and payouts; record payouts in transit; finish the bank rec
- Day 2: reconcile sales tax by state, post a refund reserve, tie inventory to the books, book COGS
- Day 3: reconcile each balance sheet account, review every journal entry, preliminary P&L and flux
- Day 4: final adjustments, sales tax returns, the reporting package with KPIs, hard close
- Flags payouts and refund reserves as the steps that usually slip
Nonprofit month-end close checklist
- 33 close tasks and 6 pre-close tasks with a status column and a restricted fund tracker
- Day 1: receipts tagged to funds, payroll allocated by effort, AP bills, depreciation
- Day 2: bank and card recs, accruals, a grant allowability review, grant receivables and deferred revenue
- Day 3: pledges, in-kind gifts, releases from restriction, shared cost allocation, preliminary trial balance
- Day 4: restricted net assets tied to the books by fund, award budget to actual, draft statements
- Days 5 and 6: review with the director or treasurer, grant sign-off, hard close, board finance package
- Bookkeeper tasks are flagged so they land on the days the bookkeeper works
How it works
- Describe your team, the entities you consolidate, your systems, and the number of days you have to close, or share where the current close stands.
- askROI's Run a month-end close tool builds the plan in the chat: a pre-close checklist, tasks for each close day from T+1 to hard close, the dependencies between them, and a status board with owner, deadline, status, and blocker.
- Copy the checklist into your close tracker, or keep chatting to update statuses as the close moves or run a retrospective when it ends.
What people use it for
- Close calendar a pre-close list plus tasks for each day, from cash and accruals through reconciliations, draft financials, and hard close.
- Dependencies see which tasks can start on day one and which wait on others, and where the critical path runs.
- Daily standups a status board of not started, in progress, complete, blocked, and at risk tasks for a 15 minute check-in.
- Shorter closes a three day close target with the prerequisites it needs, such as automated recurring entries and continuous reconciliation.
- Retrospectives questions to ask after the close and common bottlenecks with their fixes.
Questions
What does the checklist cover?
Pre-close tasks in the last days of the month, then each close day: cash, payroll, accruals, depreciation, and prepaids first; revenue recognition, subledger reconciliations, and FX revaluation next; balance sheet and intercompany reconciliations; the tax provision, equity roll-forward, and draft statements; then management review, hard close, period lock, and the reporting package.
Can it track a close that is already running?
Yes. Tell it which tasks are done, in progress, or blocked, and it builds a status board with owners, deadlines, and blockers, and flags the tasks at risk of missing their day.
How is this different from the AI Checklist Generator?
The checklist generator makes a printable PDF checklist for any event or process. This tool is built for the accounting close: it knows the usual close tasks, the order they depend on, and the critical path, and returns the plan as text in the chat.
What does it not do?
It does not connect to your ERP, post entries, or lock periods, and it does not give financial advice. It plans and tracks the work, and a qualified finance professional should review the close activities.