Why one hour is the right target
Month-end used to eat three days at one of the firms we work with. Now, the same accountant closes in under an hour. Not because she’s faster — because her checklist never changes and the tool does most of the work.
Here is the exact routine she runs on the last working day of every month. We’ve asked her permission to share it, and we’ve printed it as a checklist you can pin next to your desk.
The 20-minute pre-close
- Export the unreconciled-payments list. Anything older than 72 hours gets allocated or written up with a reason.
- Pull the AR aging bucket ≥ 60 days. Send statements. Escalate anything over 90.
- Pull the AP aging bucket. Confirm what you owe and which bills are disputed.
- Check the clearance queue. Any pending stock clearances get approved or rejected with notes — nothing sits in limbo.
The 20-minute reconcile
- Import the bank CSV. Match MoMo and bank payments against invoices.
- Cross-check the cash drawer against the ledger. Count, deposit, book the difference if any with a reason.
- Verify the VAT output and input totals tie to the invoice register and bill register.
The 15-minute close
- Trial balance: confirm debits = credits.
- Review the period-close preview: transactions included, VAT totals, AR and AP balances.
- Lock the period. Verify the audit event writes with your name and timestamp.
- Export VAT summary and balance sheet. File in the shared drive, labeled by period.
Nothing in the routine is clever. Every step is defensive: each one catches a class of error that used to surface three weeks later when the numbers refused to match.
The first month you run the checklist, it takes two hours. By the third month, one hour. By the sixth month, the list has small customizations for your branch and your stock mix, and it stays at one hour forever.
I used to dread month-end. Now I look forward to it — one hour of focused work, and then my numbers match for 29 days straight.— Aline Uwimana, Gikondo Distributors