Trigger
Month-end close project opens
1
Statement and Feed Gathering
Staff Accountant
This phase begins when the month-end recurring project opens in Financial Cents. Client emails are checked for pinned items, bank statements are largely pre-pulled by a separate intern project before the close opens, staff collects bank stragglers and credit card statements, and the feeds are swept for anything left uncoded. The staff close must complete by the 10th of the month. Ends with a Role handoff from Staff Accountant to Staff Accountant reconciliation work. Transferred: complete statements and fully coded feeds for the month. Acceptance criteria: every available account statement is filed and no uncoded feed items remain.
PROCESS 1.1
Statement Collection Process
Check the client's email for pinned messages that affect the close.
End state
Pinned items reviewed and actioned or noted
Collect bank statements missing after the separate recurring intern pre-pull project. The intern project files most bank statements into each client's shared drive as reconciliation source PDFs before the close opens.
Trigger
Intern pre-pull complete or bank statement missing from the client drive
End state
Missing bank statements filed in the client shared drive
Staff pulls every credit card statement because interns do not pull card statements and separate card logins are impractical. Staff usually uses the owner's login. If a card cycle crosses month end and the statement is unavailable by the 10th, that statement waits for next month's close.
Trigger
Credit card statements available before the staff close deadline
End state
Available card statements filed for reconciliation
PROCESS 1.2
Feed Completion Process
Sweep the feeds for anything the weekly passes missed.
Trigger
Statements in hand
End state
Uncoded items identified
Categorize the stragglers against the client's chart of accounts.
Trigger
Uncoded items identified
End state
Feeds fully coded through month end
2
Reconciliation and Journal Entries
Staff Accountant
This phase begins when statement and feed gathering completes; carried forward: coded feeds and filed statements; entry criteria: phase 1 checklist complete in Financial Cents. Every bank and credit card account reconciles to its statement, and the client's recurring monthly journal entries are prepared, validated, and posted. Ends when the trial balance reflects a fully reconciled, fully adjusted month.
PROCESS 2.1
Account Reconciliation Process
Standard QBO reconciliation per account. Account count per client is fuel.
Trigger
Feeds coded and statements filed
End state
Every bank account reconciled for the month
Same reconciliation for every card account.
Trigger
Bank reconciliations complete
End state
Every card account reconciled for the month
PROCESS 2.2
Recurring Journal Entry Process
Pull source reports, build entries from the client's entry types, validate every line against the chart of accounts, and confirm each entry balances. Mismatches halt for a human answer.
Trigger
Accounts reconciled
End state
Entries validated and balanced in the export template
Post via the export template into QuickBooks Online, attaching the pulled reports to the entries.
Trigger
Entries validated
End state
Month's recurring entries posted in QuickBooks Online
3
Reporting and Review Handoff
Staff Accountant
This phase begins when reconciliation and journal entry work completes; carried forward: a reconciled and adjusted month; entry criteria: reconciliations complete in QuickBooks Online. The custom financial reports refresh, the disclaimer is verified, an error pass runs, and the close formally hands to the lead accountant. The formal handoff to the lead accountant is a Functional handoff under the function split. This phase ends the workflow when the first task in the review project is checked, signaling the lead that the month is ready for review.
PROCESS 3.1
Report Refresh Process
Refresh the client's custom reports in QuickBooks Online for the closed month, save them, and confirm the no-assurance disclaimer renders on every report.
Trigger
Reconciliation and entries complete
End state
Report package current for the month with disclaimer present
Staff-level sanity pass before the lead's formal review. The practice checks for negative assets, negative expense accounts, and unexpected new account lines. No formal staff checklist exists yet; creating an elementary checklist is an agreed gap.
Trigger
Reports refreshed and disclaimer confirmed
End state
Obvious errors resolved or flagged
PROCESS 3.2
Review Handoff Process
Contractors paid over 2,000 dollars this month go to the lead accountant, feeding the year-end 1099 process. The 2,000 dollar monthly contractor-list threshold is a monthly review heuristic distinct from the 600 dollar annual 1099 qualification threshold; a vendor under 2,000 dollars in any month can still cross 600 dollars for the year.
Trigger
Month's payments final
End state
Lead has the month's contractor payment list
The 1099 workbook's improvement backlog moves W-9 collection into the monthly close. Staff request W-9s or at least email addresses for new vendors paid over the annual 600 dollar threshold, so January filing season starts covered. This is currently applied only on newer clients' templates.
Trigger
Monthly contractor and vendor activity coded, with new payees over the threshold
End state
W-9 or vendor email requested and logged
Check the first task in the client's review project in Financial Cents; this is the formal functional handoff to the lead accountant. Staff close is due the 10th, and the client-facing goal is financials delivered by the 20th or the per-client agreed date, which is the window the review workflow works inside.
Trigger
All close tasks complete
End state
Lead accountant notified the month is ready for review
WORKFLOW MAP REVIEW
Notes & Assumptions
Sources and confidence
- Built from the Financial Cents "**Monthly Client - Month End Close" template (11 tasks, Staff Accountant role). TGF Holdings shows monthly close instances since March.
- Process 2.2 (recurring journal entries) is draft because the activity library location remains partially open, but the month-end template and workshop confirm the work exists. The template is applied template-then-tailor per client; TGF's project may have condensed template steps, so double-check remains pending.
- The whole map is marked DRAFT pending the follow-up review session (~2026-07-14).
Structure notes
- Three phases, below the four-phase guideline; single-owner monthly loop with natural stages. Kept natural rather than padded.
- The template is flat (one section); the phase and process structure is our grouping.
Assumptions to verify
- Function split applied (2026-07-07 workshop): staff accounting, lead accounting, controller accounting, CFO, and advisory are mapped as distinct functions, so handoffs between them are typed Functional. The full split was confirmed by the operator on 2026-07-08 (staff accounting and lead accounting are their own functions); the earlier decision-record wording that kept staff/lead role-level is superseded.
- The intern/staff statement split is answered: interns pre-pull bank statements; staff pulls cards and straggler bank statements.
- Intern statement pre-pull context: roughly three interns spend two days each month across the client base; pulls run against mostly small local bank portals using the firm's read-only accountant logins, with MFA codes going to a shared codes inbox or firm Google Voice number for about 80 percent of clients. The rest are legacy personal-number setups. Automation vendors covered only about a quarter of the firm's banks, making this a named improvement target.
- AI involvement in statement pulls is gated on scoped read-only bank access; per-bank login SOPs are the anticipated pattern.
- Journal entries are placed after reconciliation; in practice some entries may need to post before accounts can reconcile.
- Leads verify each account's reconciliation detail during review; with up to 15 bank accounts per client this gets skipped under load and is a named quality improvement target.
FOR THE MAPPING SESSION
All open questions (6)
Phase 1: Statement and Feed Gathering
Jump to phase ↑- Q4
For each client: how many bank and credit card accounts, at which institutions?
And credential storage shows two positions - the workshop's vault systems vs the blank per-client password-log spreadsheet in the template folder - which is current practice?
Phase 2: Reconciliation and Journal Entries
Jump to phase ↑- Q1
Where does the recurring monthly journal entry-type library live, separate from client-specific tailored template tasks?
- Q2
Which clients have journal entry skills built already, and which entry types does the current skill library cover?
Phase 3: Reporting and Review Handoff
Jump to phase ↑- Q3
Custom financial reports: dates are updated in QuickBooks custom reports; how much do report formats vary by client?
- Q6
Build the elementary staff review checklist for the pre-handoff sanity pass: the year-end checklist's Staff tab, including P&L reasonability trends, Miscellaneous, Uncategorized, unapplied, and Suspense balances, other-income accuracy, and class coding, is the starting model to adapt to monthly.
Workflow-wide
- Q5
Did the Financial Cents month-end template condense any steps versus the process the team described?
Double-check while folding in templates.