Cut Days from the Monthly Close Without Losing Accuracy
Most finance teams spend weeks closing the books each month, but industry experts say that timeline can be cut significantly without sacrificing accuracy. The key lies in strategic process improvements like automation, workflow redesign, and earlier task scheduling that address the root causes of delays. This article breaks down five expert-backed strategies that accounting teams can implement to speed up their monthly close while maintaining precision.
Automate Reconciliations and Prioritize Exceptions
When asked to shorten the monthly close, I first identify high-volume, repeatable tasks that follow clear rules and consume most of the team's time, since those are safest to streamline. At Advanced Professional Accounting Services we automated reconciliation and exception review so the system matched transactions and only flagged true edge cases for human review. That adjustment shortened close cycles while maintaining high confidence because staff validated a focused set of exceptions rather than reworking every transaction. We also kept simple verification steps and an audit trail so any issue is quick to test and correct.
Consolidate Requests to Reduce Delays
When someone asks to shorten the close, the first thing I do is track where we're actually waiting. Most of our delay comes from waiting on clients - missing statements, unclear transactions, questions that need answers before we can close the books.
The adjustment that cut the most days from our close was moving to a single structured monthly request, sent a few days before month-end. Instead of emailing clients throughout the close with one question at a time, we send one checklist covering everything we'll need: bank and credit card statements, notes on unusual transactions, confirmation of owner draws or transfers, and anything that won't be obvious from the transaction feed. We follow up once if we don't hear back, and then we work with what we have.
The result was significant. We stopped starting the close in pieces and started it with a complete picture. That cut several days out of the process and also reduced rework, because we weren't categorizing transactions on assumptions and circling back later to correct them. It also shifted the dynamic with clients. They could see the close was a coordinated process with a clear input, and they started getting us the information faster because the ask was consolidated instead of drip-fed.
If you're trying to tighten your close, start by figuring out where the time is actually going. The slow part is usually waiting on clients, and that's fixable with better process design rather than more staff or faster software.
Amy Coats
Founder, Accounting Atelier
https://www.accountingatelier.com
Redesign Workflows and Solve Intercompany
The companies that successfully accelerate the monthly close focus on better process design, not just speed. When you redesign for accuracy and efficiency, speed follows naturally. I've used a four-part framework that helped a Fortune 500 company achieve a 57% cycle time reduction in their close and consolidation process.
First, eliminate unnecessary tasks. The checks on checks. The reports nobody reads. These accumulate over time and become sacred cows that waste days every month.
Second, move monthly activities out of close. Depreciation entries, intercompany invoices, and recurring journal entries often get treated as "close activities" when they can be completed mid-month. Shifting these frees up critical time at month-end.
Third, challenge false dependencies. Most close processes run sequentially when many tasks could run in parallel. Map each major workflow and identify what truly needs upstream data versus what's just habit. Redesign the sequence to start activities earlier.
Finally, automate individual processes. But only after you've eliminated waste and fixed the design.
The one area that consistently creates the longest delays: intercompany. Reconciling AP and AR, eliminating intercompany profit, and settling balances becomes imprecise and painful due to years of bad data and fragmented processes. In most organizations, intercompany is the "long tent pole" in the close. Although it's the most vexing to solve, it often yields the greatest benefit for close acceleration.
Shift Tasks Earlier with Preclose Controls
**Summary:** This is strong. I would only make it slightly more natural and less polished so it sounds more like you.
When I am asked to shorten the monthly close, I do not start by asking the team to work faster. I start by asking what work truly needs month-end data and what work is just being done after month-end because that is how the process has always worked.
The key is to map the close by task, owner, source data, dependency, and risk level. Some items do need final month-end activity. But many items can be moved earlier. Recurring journal entries, fixed asset updates, prepaid amortization, debt schedules, payroll accrual templates, and preliminary reconciliations can often be prepared before the month closes. That leaves the post-close window for the areas that actually need final data and review.
One thing that has worked well is creating a pre-close process during the last week of the month. The team reviews open items, confirms who owns each schedule, updates recurring entries, identifies unusual transactions, and starts reconciliations where the data is already available. Then, when month-end comes, the team is not starting from zero.
The goal is not just to cut days. It is to cut waiting, confusion, duplicate review, and last-minute follow-up. I also like using a clear close calendar with due dates, owners, and review levels based on risk. Not every account needs the same level of review every month. High-risk or judgmental areas should get more attention, while routine, low-risk areas can be standardized.
That keeps confidence high because the process becomes more controlled, not less controlled. A faster close should still produce reliable numbers, clear support, and a clean review trail. The best close improvements usually come from moving work earlier, clarifying ownership, and focusing review time on the areas that actually carry risk.
Validate Upstream Inputs to Prevent Rework
To shorten a close process, you have to actually see the process and map it end to end. How long does each step take, who owns it, where are the pain points, where are the bottlenecks? This is the Japanese gemba principle: go to the process and watch it work. As a Six Sigma Black Belt, I have done this plenty of times. Almost every time, leadership has one view of how the process runs and the people doing the work have a more realistic one. They know what is broken and how to fix it, but what they lack is the right platform to tell the story.
Once you have the map, the bottleneck is rarely the longest step. It is usually the step that gets touched late in the cycle but has a lot of upstream dependencies. On a close I owned, one of the biggest unlocks came from validating inputs before close even started. Things like contractual rates and master data that should not change during close but often did. By validating contractual terms earlier and throughout the quarter, we avoided a multi-million dollar prior period adjustment that we would have otherwise caught too late. That kind of upstream discipline removes days of rework and gives the team confidence in the numbers going in.
