Month-end and year-end: the checklist, the closing date, and the year-end close

The month-end hour

1. Bank feeds reviewed for every bank and card account, no lines left unmatched. See bank feeds.
2. Reconcile each account to its statement. Difference 0.00.
3. Undeposited Funds balance is zero or explained (receipts banked after month-end).
4. A/R Aging: anything over 60 days gets a call. Write off what will never come, with a credit memo to bad debt.
5. A/P Aging: nothing older than its terms that you did not mean to leave.
6. Company → Verify Data: balanced, no orphaned lines. It takes seconds.
7. Profit & Loss for the month, compared with last month (Reports → P&L Comparative). Anything that moved by more than you expect, open it: click through to the account register and look at the entries.
8. Back up off the machine. See backups.
9. Set the closing date to the last day of the month. Below.

Lock closed periods

Company → Company Settings → Closing date. Nothing dated on or before that date can be entered, edited or deleted. Anyone who tries gets a clear message, and an administrator can move the date back temporarily if a correction is really needed, which the audit log records. Move it forward every month after the checklist. This single setting is what stops a January invoice being accidentally re-dated into December after the tax return is filed.

Give your accountant what they need

Most accountants want, for the year: the trial balance, the general ledger, the balance sheet and profit and loss, the bank reconciliation reports, and the aging reports, all as of the year-end date. Every one is under Reports and exports to CSV or PDF. Or skip the exports: send an encrypted backup and they open the whole file, or invite them onto your network with Accountant Access. The accountants page describes what they will see.

Post their adjustments

Year-end adjustments, such as depreciation, accruals and prepaid releases, come back as journal entries. Enter them under Activities → Make Journal Entry dated the last day of the year and tick Adjusting entry. The adjusting-entry flag keeps them separate: Reports → Adjusting Entries lists exactly what the accountant added, and Reports → Adjusted Trial Balance shows the before, the adjustments, and the after in three columns, which is the standard working paper. If your accountant worked in a copy of the file, the Accountant → Import accountant changes feature brings their adjusting entries into yours without touching anything else.

Close the year

Only after the adjustments are in and the return is done. Accountant → Year-End Close for the fiscal year: AcboBooks takes a backup automatically, then posts one closing entry that moves the year's net income from the income and expense accounts into retained earnings (or owner's equity), so the new year's profit and loss starts from zero. The balance sheet is unchanged by this. Then set the closing date to the year-end date and leave it there.

Fiscal years that do not end in December are fine: the fiscal year start month is set in Company Settings when the company is created, and every year-based report follows it.

Undo a year-end close

If something was missed, Accountant → Year-End Close → Undo reverses the closing entry for that year, so you can post the missing item and close again. The audit log records both. Move the closing date back first if it is blocking the entry.