Bookkeepers Near Abilene AlternativeHow a month gets closed

The account we close first

The first account is the bank. Not the prettiest report, and not the loan you hope looks smaller. If the operating account does not tie to the statement date, every other page is a story. We pick the statement, enter the ending balance and the ending date, and we do not click finished while a difference is still on the screen.

The Texas and Pacific depot still stands as the town's old front door. A finished month has to pass a gate like that one. Nothing after the statement date is trusted until that date is the one we agreed.

Cards come next, then the loans, then the sales tax payable if you collect it. A close that stops at the checking account and calls itself done will lie to you the first week a vendor asks why a payment is missing. We would rather be slow on the first month and complete than fast and pretty.

Where a feed tries to help and should not

The bank feed is a list of lines the software has not accepted yet. Some match a record you already entered. Some are new. Some are duplicates of a week you already booked from a file. We accept a match only when the amount, the account, and the date belong together. A line that is a transfer is not categorized as income just because it arrived.

Rules are useful when they are boring and right. A rule that sends every deposit from a certain customer to sales is a gift. A rule that sends the owner's personal reimbursement to sales is how a year gets overstated. During a close we read the rules that fired that month. The ones that mis-fired get turned off, and the months they touched get repaired before we move on.

The list that should have shrunk

Uncleared items are checks and payments the file still thinks are outstanding. Owners skip that list because it looks technical, and we read it on the first pass. A recent one is normal. A two-year-old one is a decision. We ask whether it cleared outside the window, whether it should be voided, or whether it was never sent. The cash comes back to the truth in the month we decide, which is the month you can explain.

We do this in a month in Abilene the same way we do it in a quiet month. Fair week does not get a pass, and neither does move-in week. The extra receipts are real. They belong in the month the money moved. Smearing them so the graph looks smooth is how you forget which Saturday paid for the cooler repair.

What you hold when it is done

You hold a reconciliation that ties, a profit report for that month, a balance sheet as of that statement date, and a short note of what we still need. The note lists the three things that would make next month faster, and we keep it to those three. A missing statement. A loan document. A deposit nobody could name.

If a number has to leave the building before the close is finished, we label it a draft. Lenders can smell an unlabeled draft. We would rather you show a closed prior month than a hopeful current one.