The Report That Takes Three Days

Month-end takes three days. Almost none of it is thinking.

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The days go to exporting, pasting and reconciling numbers between systems that disagree. Connect the systems, write the matching rules down once, and month-end shrinks to the part that needs a person: reading the numbers and deciding what to do.

You know the routine even if you don’t do it yourself. On the first working day, someone exports from the client system, the accounting system and the spreadsheet that fills the gap between them. They paste each export into the month-end workbook, fix the columns that moved since last month, and rebuild the totals. On the second day they chase the numbers that don’t agree. On the third they format the report, check it and send it. In the last few hours of the last day, someone reads it and decides something.

Where the three days go

The gold slice at the end is the only part that needs the person doing it, and the part you hired a controller or an operations director for. The rest is moving numbers from one place to another and checking they arrived intact, which software does faster and without the Friday-night error.

Why the systems disagree

Each system is right on its own, and they disagree with each other in small, consistent ways. The same client is named one way in the client system and another in the accounts. One system closes the month at midnight, the other when the last batch posts. A fee is booked gross in one place and net in the other.

Reconciling is the work of making them agree, by hand, every month. The person who does it knows every one of those differences by heart, which is why the report takes three days, and why it stops when they are away.

What an automated month-end looks like

You keep the systems you have. They need connecting, and the rules in that person’s head need writing down once.

1. Numbers from the source. The report reads directly from the systems of record instead of from an export someone pasted, so there is no copy to go stale.
2. The matching rules, written once. The same client under two names, the cut-off difference, the gross-and-net fee: each becomes a rule that runs every night instead of a correction made every month.
3. Exceptions the next morning. The nightly run flags a mismatch the day after it happens, while it is easy to trace, instead of at month-end, four weeks later.
4. A person signs off. The report is produced on schedule, and someone who understands it reviews and approves it before it goes anywhere. That step stays with a person.

For the first full cycle, the new report runs beside the old workbook, and your team checks that the numbers agree before anyone relies on it. After that, month-end is a review: the last slice of the bar, reading the numbers and deciding what to do about them.

Saranga, who leads web and integration on our team, built real-time financial reporting dashboards at MJ Hudson, a London fund-services group.

What stays with people

Automation does not make the judgment calls. Accruals, estimates and the provision for the client who may not pay stay with the people accountable for them. What it removes is the typing, the pasting and the chasing, so those people spend month-end on the judgment instead of the preparation.