The month-end closing process should only take one to three days to complete. Yet, I’m betting that most small business controllers and accounting managers are missing the most crucial checklist item. Care to guess what that item is? I’ll give you a hint: It concerns continuous improvement.
My Favorite Closing Checklist Step
It is essential to evaluate whether the current month-end closing checklist needs to be updated. Some steps may no longer be necessary, while others might need to be added or adjusted.
If you are a CFO or controller handed over the reins to the staff to complete the month-end closing, consider keeping a scorecard requiring all managers to track the changes made to next month’s closing checklist.
Changes will be minimal for small businesses. However, I like this accountability because it prevents the staff from becoming complacent or going through the motions.
Furthermore, using the scorecard idea shown above in Smartsheet allows supervisors to assess the quality of changes by examining the notes in the comment sections.
Once the month-end closing process is completed, I encourage the controller to conduct a post-mortem with staff to determine what went right and what could have been improved. A tracking system like the one above will be a starting point for these brief discussions.
Continuous Improvement Is a Growth Mindset
As your company strives to enhance the quality and level of performance for its customers, we must also focus on the tools we employ to ensure we provide the highest quality of service to our internal customers – the financial statement readers. That will never happen without timely and accurate accounting numbers. An intelligent month-end closing process is a prerequisite to timeliness and accuracy. However, we can never let the monthly process grow stale. Adding a simple closing checklist item can alleviate that potential problem.
Furthermore, let’s not forget the post-mortem step either.
