What is a month-end close?

Complete means every movement of money recorded and categorised with its paper attached; reconciled means every balance agrees with its statement. Two different jobs share the name. The accountant's close is adjusting entries, accruals and the general ledger. The company's own close is everything that has to be true before the accountant can start, and in a company of six it is one person and a Saturday. This entry is about the second one; the month-end close checklist walks it step by step.

It answers four questions, in order. Is every account's month in: bank and card statements, platform reports, exchange history, wallets read. Does every row say what it was: a category on everything, a receipt on what needs one. Is every balance the bank's balance: the closing figure on each statement against the book on the last day of the month. Is the month sealed, so a figure the accountant used on the 5th cannot move on the 12th without anyone noticing.

Crypto adds three lines to that list rather than a new list. Each sale needs the lot it consumed and the realised gain worked out. Each transfer between your own wallets needs its two halves joined, so it is not an expense on one side and income on the other. And every currency needs a rate on every day it moved.

The lock matters more than the checklist. An unlocked month can be restated by a late receipt or a background sync, and nobody sees the restatement until the accountant's figures and yours disagree.

How this shows up in Orla

For the accountant lists every month with activity and, on a past month, a checklist of ten checks with a counter over them ("Ready to close · 5 of 10"). Three of them block closing: every row has a category, every category and account has a code, the realised crypto gain included, and no payment of the month waits for a quorum. The rest go into the record: receipts on expenses, a rate for every currency on every day, the month's bills and client invoices paid, a statement filed for every bank, card and platform account that moved, each statement's closing balance against the book, and earlier months closed.

Close seals the month, and anything dated inside it is refused afterwards with the month named in the refusal; Reopen is for owners and admins and asks for a reason. The archive stamps a fingerprint, so a month edited after it was sent says "changed after the handoff" instead of looking untouched. The chart of accounts and the checklist are free on every plan; the journal file for Xero and QuickBooks and closing a month are on Pro and above, where closing has been switched on for the space.