Month end close checklist
- Working days to close
- 2.75
- Computed on this page from the inputs below
- Doing the tasks
- 30
- Computed on this page from the inputs below
- Reviewing them
- 3
- Computed on this page from the inputs below
- Total hours in the close
- 33
- Computed on this page from the inputs below
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. Monthendly publishes no benchmark close time, no industry average DPO and no accounting standard: the tasks, the minutes, the rate and the exception rate are yours, and the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own figures.
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The figures above start from a worked example (2.75). Change any input and the answer updates as you type.
Download the Month end close checklist worked example (CSV)
A month end close checklist is usually a spreadsheet somebody inherited: a list of tasks with initials beside them, edited under pressure, never quite reviewed. It tells you what to do and nothing about how long it will take, which is why closes overrun and nobody can say by how much. This worksheet prices the close instead. Put in the number of tasks, the average minutes one takes, how many need a review as well, how many people are on it and how many hours a day they actually give it, and it returns the hours in the close, the hours each person carries and the working days it will run to. It also shows what one more person would do to that number, which is the argument most finance teams have every quarter without ever putting figures on it.
Count the tasks honestly, including the chasing
Forty tasks at forty-five minutes is 30 hours. The number most teams underestimate is the count, not the duration: the checklist holds the accounting tasks and omits the chasing, the queries and the re-work, which is exactly the part that makes a close slip. Put the real number in and the answer stops being optimistic.
Reviews are work too
Six tasks needing a thirty-minute review adds 3 hours, taking the close to 33. Review time is almost never on the checklist because it belongs to a different person, and it is often the constraint: the preparer is finished and the month is not closed.
Working days, and what one more person would do
33 hours across two people giving it six hours a day is 2.75 working days. Across three it is 1.83. That difference is the hiring argument in arithmetic, and the sheet deliberately does not tell you whether the tasks actually divide that way, because they often do not.
Month end close checklist: common questions
Why hours a day rather than the working day? Because nobody gives a close eight hours. The people closing the month are also answering queries, handling payments and doing the rest of their job. Six is a realistic default for a team that treats the close as a priority; put your own number in and the days move accordingly.
Should the checklist include payables? Yes, and this hub treats it as part of the close for that reason. Everything unapproved at the cut-off becomes an accrual or a surprise, and the size of that pile is the best single predictor of how long a close takes.
Is there a standard number of tasks? No, and a template that claims one is describing somebody else's business. The value of counting your own is that it is the first time most teams see the close as a quantity rather than a period of stress.