Month-End Close Checklist

A month-end close tracked in a spreadsheet stops being a plan and becomes a record of what already happened. Nobody knows which task is late until the close date passes, dependencies hide in email, and when review notes come back there is no evidence of who decided what. The workflow treats the close as an owned checklist. Every task has a name, a single owner, a due date, and the tasks it blocks. Each morning the list is rebuilt: completed work drops off, anything past due is called out by owner, and anything blocked shows the upstream task that is holding it. A Friday check compares the remaining work against the days remaining and flags what would have to be deferred to hold the date, which turns a missed close into a decision rather than a surprise. When a task is signed off, the approver, the date, and any adjustment are recorded against it, so the audit trail assembles itself during the close instead of after it. A person still sets the calendar, assigns owners, and approves every manual journal.