1. Confirm what you actually received
Before anyone touches a ledger, establish what arrived. Compare the documents in hand against what the engagement expects: bank and credit card statements for every account, sales records, payroll reports, and receipts for the period.
This step first because it is the one that stalls the others. A missing statement discovered on day two is a phone call. The same statement discovered on day twelve is a missed deadline, and the difference is entirely when you looked.
- One statement per bank and credit card account, covering the full period
- Sales and accounts receivable records
- Payroll registers if the client runs payroll
- Receipts and invoices for expenses, especially anything over the CRA documentary thresholds
- Notice of any new account, loan, or asset purchase during the period
2. Get intake off your staff's desk
Chasing documents is the least valuable time your firm bills, and it is where a shared folder or client portal earns its place. A standing folder per client that the client drops into all month beats a scramble at close, because the work arrives spread out instead of all at once.
This is also the natural point to run automated extraction if you use it. Reading a month of receipts into draft lines is the highest-volume, lowest-judgment task in the close, and getting it done before review starts means your reviewer opens a populated ledger rather than an empty one.
3. Code expenses and settle the judgment calls
Coding is where a bookkeeper's knowledge of the client shows. Recurring suppliers should be handled by rules rather than decided again every month, which frees attention for the lines that genuinely need it.
Flag the recurring judgment calls explicitly rather than letting them ride: meals and entertainment, which is generally limited to fifty percent; vehicle costs, which need a defensible business-use percentage; home office claims; and anything that looks personal. Note the reasoning on the line while you have it. Reconstructing it in nine months is far more expensive than writing it now.
4. Reconcile every account
Reconcile each bank and credit card account to the statement, and do not accept a close with an unexplained difference. A reconciliation that is off by a small amount is not a rounding annoyance, it is an unlocated error that will be larger and harder to find next month.
Check the accounts that quietly accumulate mistakes: undeposited funds, the suspense or ask-my-accountant account, owner or shareholder loan balances, and any clearing account. These are where misfiled entries go to hide.
5. Review GST/HST before anything is filed
Sales tax deserves its own pass rather than being assumed correct because the software applied a rate. Confirm the rate matches the province of supply, that input tax credits are supported by documents meeting the CRA information requirements, and that anything zero-rated or exempt is treated deliberately rather than by default.
For firms with clients in several provinces, this is the step most likely to produce a finding, because the rate that is right for one client is wrong for another and the error looks identical to correct work at a glance.
6. Read the statements as a person
Before sign-off, look at the profit and loss against the prior month and the same month last year. You are looking for the things reconciliation cannot catch: a category that doubled, revenue that fell without explanation, an expense that vanished because a recurring bill was coded somewhere new.
This is the review a client actually values. Anyone can produce a balanced set of books. Noticing that subcontractor costs rose forty percent while revenue was flat is the part they cannot do themselves.
7. Sign off and lock the period
Record who reviewed the file and when, then close the period so later edits are deliberate rather than accidental. If your system supports reopening a closed period, that is not a weakness in the control, it is realism: a late receipt will arrive, and it should be handled as a visible reopening rather than a quiet edit.
Send the client their statements with a short note on anything you flagged. The note is what turns a compliance deliverable into advice, and it takes about four minutes.
Common questions
- How long should a month-end close take per client?
- It depends on transaction volume and how organised the client is, but firms that standardise intake and coding rules spend most of their time on review rather than data entry. The way to shorten a close is to move work earlier in the month, not to review faster.
- What is the most commonly missed step?
- Reviewing the clearing and suspense accounts. They balance to zero when handled and quietly absorb errors when they are not.
This article is general information for bookkeeping professionals, not tax advice. Confirm current rules with the Canada Revenue Agency or a licensed practitioner before you rely on them for a client file.