The close
A close you can hand
to your auditor.
Most close software records that you pressed a button. This records that the work happened — who did it, when, what proves it, and who agreed.
- 01
Adopt a checklist
Start from one of three: a standard close, a multi-entity close, or a payments close with settlement matching and client-money safeguarding. Edit any of it. Fan one line out across your bank accounts or entities so eight accounts means eight sign-offs, not one approval covering all of them.
- 02
The month opens itself
Closing a period opens the next one. Every procedure arrives with its owner, its reviewer and a deadline resolved in working days on your own calendar — weekend and public holidays included.
- 03
Work gets prepared
The preparer does the procedure and attaches what proves it. Items that demand evidence cannot be marked prepared without it. Where a procedure has an underlying computation, the agent can run it and attach its own receipt.
- 04
Someone else signs
Approval goes to a second person. The preparer is refused their own signature. Rejections go back with a reason, and both directions are recorded.
- 05
The period closes — or does not
While anything is open, the close is refused and told you exactly what is outstanding. Optionally the close itself needs a second signature, the same rule one level up.
- 06
And then it is protected
A closed period locks the source files it signed off on. Re-upload one and it is refused until the period is reopened — and the reopen is recorded, with who and why.
The trail
Append-only, and
able to prove it.
Every action writes a line: prepared, approved, rejected, reassigned, evidence attached, evidence removed, thresholds changed, period closed, period reopened.
Each line commits to the one before it. Edit any row directly in the database and every hash after it breaks — and a nightly check reports exactly where. The binder states the result on its first page, because an auditor's first question about a log is whether it could have been changed.
Illustrative. The sequence close → reopen → close is exactly what most systems cannot show you.
The pack
And the report at the end of it.
Variance against budget or prior, materiality you set, reconciliation checks, and commentary written against the computed figures — exported as a workbook, every time, deterministically.
