Month-end close

Close is the workspace where you take one calendar month from open books to signed-off, locked numbers of record. Everything a bookkeeper needs at month end lives on the one tab: the checks, the sign-offs, the reports, and the button that locks the month.

What the Close tab gives you

Each month gets its own guided page, made of four parts:

• A close checklist — automated checks that grade the month's data (ledger generation, balancing, sync, inventory, reconciliation against your accounting provider) alongside manual items you tick yourself. Checks are grouped into Data completeness, Sync & reconciliation, Review, Sign-off and Custom, with a done/total counter for the month and for each group.
• A report pack — nine month-end reports built for the period: Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, Inventory Valuation, COGS, GINR Balance, Reconciliation Summary, Trial Balance Reconciliation and Sync Category Reconciliation. While the month is open they read Preliminary; closing freezes them as the month's numbers of record.
• A sync breakdown — Sync status — why isn't everything on the provider? accounts for every entry in the month that has not reached your accounting provider, with a reason and a total for each group.
• A Close action — records who signed the month off, what they acknowledged while doing it, the figures they signed off against, and locks the books at the month end.

The value is that it is one place. Without it you would be visiting the reconciliation lanes, the Reports tab, the Needs Attention inbox and Batches separately, each with its own idea of what "done" looks like, and nothing recording that you looked. The Close tab asks all of those questions for one month at once and keeps the answers.

Where to find it

1. Go to Accounting.
2. Click the Close tab, between Reconciliation and Reports.

The tabs are ordinary links, so you can open Close in a new browser tab or bookmark it like any other page.

A few other routes lead here:

• From the Accounting dashboard. The Current close tile names the earliest month that is not yet closed — the one whose turn it is — with its progress underneath, as in Jun 2026 · 6/19 checks done, or Not started if nobody has begun. Click the tile to open the Close tab. When every month is locked the tile reads All closed · Every month is locked; before your books have any history it reads — · No periods yet.
• From global search. Searching for close, month end, period, lock or closing finds Accounting → Close.

The whole Accounting tab row — Close included — stays hidden until accounting setup is finished. Until a chart of accounts exists, the setup wizard owns the page, so finish setup first and the tabs appear.

The address bar records the month you are looking at as ?period=2026-06, and picking a month in the Periods rail rewrites it as you go — so a link you copy from the Close tab reopens on that month, and a bookmark keeps working. If the month named in a link is not in the list, the page falls back to the month whose turn it is and rewrites the address to match. It does that silently: nothing on screen tells you the month you asked for was not the month you got, so check the heading rather than trusting the link.

Start here

• Close a month — the full walkthrough, from picking the month to a locked, signed-off close.
• Fix a failing check — what to do when a check fails or the close is refused.
• Which months you can close, and in what order — why closes run oldest-first.

How-to guides

• Close over outstanding inventory debt — the one permitted override, and the reason it records.
• Read the month's reports — the nine reports on screen, preliminary versus numbers of record.
• Capture your provider's trial balance — pull the provider's own figures so SKU.io can compare them account by account.
• See why entries haven't reached your provider — account for every entry that hasn't synced.
• Export the close pack — produce the month's workbook and find the download.
• Verify a closed month — prove the frozen figures still match.
• Reopen a closed month — unlock a month, with a reason on the record.

Concepts

• What closing does to your books — the lock at month end and what it stops.
• Frozen figures, staleness and drift — why closing freezes the reports, and what it means when a closed month's numbers move.
• How the close checklist works — where the checklist comes from and when it refreshes.
• What stops a close, and what only needs a tick — blocking failures versus warnings.
• How SKU.io reconciles with Xero and QuickBooks — what the close compares, and what it can't do for you.
• Batches and the close — why batched summary entries have a grace period.
• Inventory and the close — debt, divergence and pending cost changes at month end.
• Month boundaries and timezones — which month a late-evening transaction belongs to.
• Year end and the close — what December is (and isn't), and where Retained Earnings comes from.

Reference

• The close checks — every automated check and what its row says.
• Statuses in the close — month statuses and checklist row statuses.
• The Close tab at a glance — every panel, chip, counter and button.
• The close pack workbook — the exported file and its sheets.
• Close pack: columns on every report sheet — column-by-column reference.
• Who can do what — the permission each close action needs.
• Close settings and custom checklist items — what you can change about the close.

Related

• Review the ledger — the entries the close is grading.
• Read your financial statements — the Income Statement and Balance Sheet outside the close.
• How automatic accounting works — where the entries come from in the first place.