Month-end close that runs itself
How a 22-person accounting practice turned their month-end close from a five-day grind into something that lands in the inbox before stand-up.
What changed
Where the week went
Two seniors lost the first week of every month to the same list: pull the statements, chase the bills that had not arrived, match the payouts by hand, then rebuild the same pack in the same spreadsheet once per client.
We built the spine with them
The eight steps ship. Everything underneath them is the firm’s own.
DeskMate ships one eight-step spine, and it holds for every obligation a practice carries: scope, gather, reconcile, client inputs, prepare, review, approve, lodge and close. It is the same eight whether the job is a BAS, a set of accounts or a year-end. Nothing about their process was re-authored. The steps that hang under each one were read out of the systems they already run — the task templates in their practice manager, the jobs they had already finished, the mail they had already sent, and the ledger itself — then proposed back with a link to where each one came from. Their people ticked what was right and struck what was not. That is the whole mapping exercise.
-
01
Scope
What this client actually has, established before anyone starts.
Bank accounts and cards, per entity read from the ledger GST basis and cycle read from the ledger Payroll, or none read from the ledger -
02
Gather
Everything the next steps need, pulled rather than asked for.
The payout file from a finished job Quarterly loan statement from mail they had already sent Director’s card statement from a task template -
03
Reconcile
Every account that can be reconciled, each answering with its own count.
One proposed step per account, not one line for ‘banks’ read from the ledger -
04
Client inputs
The handful of things only the client can answer, asked once, together.
The unexplained deposits list from mail they had already sent Confirm any asset bought this period from a task template -
05
Prepare
The draft, in their format and their wording.
Close pack, the partner layout from a finished job Accruals worksheet from a task template -
06
Review
The check a person does, with the evidence sitting next to it.
Variance notes against last month from a finished job -
07
Approve
Nothing reaches a client until somebody says so.
Manager signs; partner signs the exceptions from a task template -
08
Lodge and close
Filed, and the file records who and when.
Filed to the client folder, named the firm’s way from a finished job
Every step above inherits the obligation’s dates and its blocking rules, so a step that cannot start yet says so, and a step nobody has picked up is visible as unassigned rather than silently late.
The rules came from them
Nobody wrote a manual. They taught a rule the moment they hit the thing the rule is about.
A rule someone teaches is theirs, and it is live on their own runs straight away — it does not wait for anybody, because they could have done the same thing by hand. It becomes the firm’s way only when they share it, and a partner approves it from one queue rather than by opening every workflow.
“Anything under thirty dollars from the suppliers we see every month, just code it. Stop asking me.”Shared the same afternoon. Approved by a partner that week.
“Never auto-match the director’s loan account. That one always stops for a person.”The rule the firm was most afraid of losing when someone is on leave.
“This client wants the pack on Tuesday, not Monday. Only this one.”Left personal on purpose — it is one client’s preference, not a house rule.
“Over fifty thousand, two of us sign it.”Shared. It now holds on every run, including the ones the partner never sees.
The shared rules are what make the close look the same whichever of them runs it. They are also what a new starter inherits on their first morning, instead of picking it up over a year of being corrected.
Admin out, judgement in
The close still needs a qualified person. It just stopped needing one for the parts that never did.
Off the desk
Work that never needed a qualified person.
- Pulling statements and payout files
- Chasing the bills that had not arrived
- Matching payouts line by line
- Rebuilding the same pack, client after client
- Re-typing coding decisions the firm made years ago
- Remembering which client wants what
Still theirs
Work that is the reason they are paid.
- Whether the accrual is right
- How to treat the one-off
- Which exceptions the client actually needs to hear
- What this month means for the next quarter
- The conversation on the call
- Signing it
Partners now open the close on day one rather than day five, and they open it to read it. That is the whole change: the same people, the same standard, spending their hours on the half of the job that needed their licence.
The engagement
“We used to dread the first week of every month. Now the close pack is in our inbox before stand-up.”
Managing Partner — 22-person practice, Sydney
Firm names are withheld at the client’s request. Naming a practice in a software case study exposes that practice’s own clients, so we describe the shape of the firm instead. Every figure comes from the firm’s own reporting.
In one line
A 22-person accounting practice automated Stripe-to-Xero reconciliation, payout matching, and partner-ready close packs.