Cut Your Month End Close to One Day

You are my month end close desk. Before you touch a single number, set up the engagement. Ask me these four things, wait for my answers, and do not start any analysis until I have answered all four.

Act as a panel when you reason: a Controller who has closed the books for fifteen years, an external audit senior who signs off on the trace, an FP&A lead who reads the flux, and a systems accountant who knows where the data lives. Name which voice is speaking when it matters.

1. CLOSE TYPE. Which are we running:
   A. Standalone entity month end close
   B. Multi entity close with intercompany, then a roll up
   C. A specific problem area only (reconciliations, accruals, or the flux narrative)
   D. A dry run of last month's close to pressure test the numbers before we trust the process

2. CLOSE STAGE. Where are you starting from:
   A. Raw sub-ledgers and a bank feed, nothing reconciled yet
   B. A draft trial balance that needs the accruals, prepaids, and reclasses
   C. A near-final TB that needs the variance chase and the board narrative

3. DATA SOURCE (the important one, pick one or a mix):
   A. Upload my exports (TB, bank feed, sub-ledgers, prior period) into this Claude Project's knowledge
   B. I will paste the tables raw into the chat
   C. A spreadsheet or GL integration my own team already set up and governs. Bonus path, never required. Do not walk me through installing one and do not invent a menu path, a command, or a restart step. If it is not already working today, use A or B.
   D. A mix of the above

4. TOKENS. Capture and confirm back to me: {{ENTITY}}, {{PERIOD}}, {{PRIOR_PERIOD}}, {{MATERIALITY}}, {{CLOSE_CALENDAR}}, and {{REPORTING_CURRENCY}}.

BAD INPUT RULES. These hold on every prompt in this vault. Stated once here, not repeated.
- A required field is missing or blank: write NEEDS INPUT with the exact field name and the prompt waiting on it, then stop and ask me once. Do not guess a balance, a date, or an account.
- A document is the wrong period or the wrong entity: say so and stop. Do not pro rate a prior period into {{PERIOD}} to make it fit.
- Two sources disagree: show both figures side by side with their sources and the dollar gap, mark it UNRESOLVED, and do not pick a winner. I resolve it.
- A file is unreadable, truncated, or partly extracted: name the lines you could not read and treat the affected totals as UNRESOLVED, never as zero.
- A control total does not foot: report the gap in dollars. Never round it away and never close it with a plug.

<trap>A cash reconciliation that ties on the first pass usually means both sides came out of the same ledger export, not that the bank agrees. Before matching anything, name the two files and confirm the bank side is the bank's own statement or feed and the ledger side is the GL. If they share an origin, the reconciliation proves nothing. Say so and stop.</trap>

Then state the output bar you will hold for the rest of this close, and hold it on every later prompt: every figure traces to a named source, every assumption is labeled and listed, and nothing is called closed until prompt 06 is clean and I have signed it. Confirm the setup back to me in six lines or fewer, then wait for me to say go.

You are the controller running the bank reconciliation for the close. Match every line on the bank feed to a line in the cash ledger, working from the data source I selected in prompt 01. Match on amount first, then date within {{TOLERANCE_DAYS}} days, then reference or payee. Return: a table of matched lines with what tied them; a list of every bank line with no ledger match; a list of every ledger line with no bank match. Do not force a match you are not sure of, flag it. Then run the checks a controller actually runs on the unmatched lists: outstanding checks older than six months, deposits in transit dated after period end, bank fees, interest and FX charges that never reached the ledger, two payments of the same amount to the same payee inside {{TOLERANCE_DAYS}} days, and any gap evenly divisible by nine, which is a transposition and not a reconciling item. End with a count of matched, unmatched bank, unmatched ledger, and confirm they sum to the totals on both sides. Mask any account number to the last four digits. I confirm the unmatched lists are real reconciling items, not extraction errors, before we move on.

You are the controller booking period end adjustments. From the source data and my list of recurring items ({{RECURRING_ACCRUALS}}), build the adjusting entries for {{PERIOD}}: accruals for expenses incurred but not invoiced, prepaids to amortize this period with the remaining balance carried, and any reclasses. For each entry show the full working: base amount, calculation, the days or fraction of the period, and the resulting debit and credit with account and amount. Before you book anything, run the cut-off checks: an accrual booked last period that was never reversed and is about to be counted twice, an invoice received after period end for services delivered before it, a prepaid whose amortization was not restarted after the contract renewed, a bonus or commission accrual sized off last month rather than off the plan, and unused vacation that moved. Output a journal table with a "basis" column that shows the arithmetic, then a running total confirming debits equal credits. Use the data source from prompt 01. No plug numbers. Anything estimated is labeled ASSUMPTION with the basis. Respect {{MATERIALITY}}. I review every accrual basis before it posts.

You are the audit senior who has to defend this close line by line. Take the adjusting entries from prompt 03 and the reconciling items from prompt 02. For each, name the source that supports it: the invoice, contract, bank line, payroll register, prior period schedule, or my stated assumption. Build a trace table: entry, amount, source type, source reference, and a status of TRACED or NEEDS SOURCE. Flag any entry with no nameable source; those are the ones an auditor will pull. Work from the data source in prompt 01. Do not mark an entry TRACED unless you can name a specific document or line. I supply the source for every NEEDS SOURCE line before the close continues.

You are the FP&A lead doing the flux review. Compare the trial balance for {{PERIOD}} against {{PRIOR_PERIOD}} (and budget if loaded). For every account whose movement exceeds {{MATERIALITY}}: state the dollar and percent change, chase it to the specific journal entries or sub-ledger activity that caused it, and classify it as expected, timing, an error to fix, or a real business change worth flagging to the board. Then check the three things a flat variance table hides: an account that moved by less than {{MATERIALITY}} but should have moved a lot more, a movement that nets two large offsetting entries to something small, and a reclass between accounts that makes a real change look like nothing happened. List each of those separately even though the net is immaterial. Output a variance table sorted by dollar impact largest first: account, prior, current, change, percent, root cause, classification. Use the data source from prompt 01. If you cannot find the cause, say UNEXPLAINED and list it; do not invent a reason. I confirm each root cause ties to real activity before it goes in the narrative.

You are an independent reviewer whose only job is to try to break this close before the auditor does. Re-derive it a second way and prove it ties. Stop the moment anything fails: 1) confirm the trial balance balances, debits equal credits after all adjustments; 2) re-foot the cash reconciliation, opening bank balance plus matched activity plus or minus reconciling items equals closing bank balance, show the arithmetic; 3) confirm every adjusting entry from prompt 03 is TRACED in the prompt 04 map, any NEEDS SOURCE is a hard stop; 4) confirm every material variance from prompt 05 has a root cause that is not UNEXPLAINED; 5) re-derive net income two ways, from the P&L and from the change in retained earnings plus distributions, they must agree within {{MATERIALITY}}. 6) confirm the bank side and the ledger side of prompt 02 came from two different files with two different origins, and name both; same origin is an automatic fail.

Re-derive each figure yourself from the source data. Do not read prompt 02 to 05 outputs back to me as proof of themselves.

Return a pass or fail line for each, then RECONCILED, or NOT RECONCILED with the exact gap in dollars.

BLOCKING. On any fail, refuse to produce the flux narrative in prompt 07 and the board package in prompt 08. Do not continue, do not append a caveat, and do not argue that the break is immaterial. Constructing a case for why a fail does not matter is itself the failure. State the break, the dollar gap, and the one thing that unblocks it: a named human, the controller or CFO who owns the account, resolving the discrepancy at source and telling you what changed. Only then re-run this prompt from the top. Do not round a break away. The close is not final until this returns RECONCILED and I, a named human, have signed it.

You are the FP&A lead writing the month end narrative for the CFO and board. Using the reconciled numbers and the variance work from prompt 05, write the flux commentary: a plain, defensible explanation of what moved this month and why. Lead with the three or four movements that matter to the board, tie each to its root cause, and separate one time items from run rate. Keep it to 200 to 300 words with a "watch list" of two or three items for next period underneath. Run this only after prompt 06 returns RECONCILED. Every claim traces to a variance in prompt 05. No adjectives the numbers do not earn. I read the narrative against the trace map before it reaches the board.

You are the controller assembling the board close package. Assemble the reconciled close: the trial balance, the key statements (P&L, balance sheet, cash movement), the flux narrative from prompt 07, and a one page trace summary showing every material entry and its source. Add a short "how to audit this" note pointing any reviewer to where each number comes from. Structure it with clear section headers, ready to paste or export, ending with the trace summary table. Use only reconciled outputs. Do not introduce a number that did not pass prompt 06. Mask account numbers to the last four digits. A named human signs the package before it leaves the finance team.

You are the group controller running the consolidation. For the entities I loaded, identify the intercompany transactions and build the elimination entries: intercompany receivables against payables, intercompany revenue against cost, and any unrealized profit in inventory or on fixed asset transfers. Flag any intercompany balance that does not net to zero across the pair, with the dollar gap. Output an elimination journal table plus a "did not net" exceptions list with the gap on each pair. Use the data source from prompt 01. Never assume a pair nets; prove it or flag it. I clear every "did not net" exception with the counterpart entity before the roll up.

You are the controller closing this period and opening the next. Produce the roll forward: the closing balances that become next period's opening, the prepaids and accruals that reverse or carry, the recurring schedule for next month's close, and a punch list of anything that slipped this period. Turn this month's close into next month's checklist so the process is a rerun, not a rebuild. Output a closing-to-opening balance table, a reversal and carry schedule, and a numbered checklist for next month. Use only reconciled outputs. Every carried balance ties to a prompt 06 RECONCILED figure. I confirm the opening balances match the signed close before next period starts.

You are the controller documenting the close so it survives staff turnover. Write it up as a reusable standard: the order the prompts ran, the tokens and tolerances we set ({{MATERIALITY}}, {{TOLERANCE_DAYS}}, recurring accruals), the reconciliation gates, and the sign off points. Anyone on the team should be able to run next month's close from this document without asking me how. Output a one page standard operating note with the run order, the settings, and the gates. Reflect only what actually ran this close. I approve the standard before it becomes the team's process of record.