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Export the close pack

The close pack is the month in one spreadsheet: a cover sheet with the period, its status, the sign-off and the checklist outcomes, then one sheet per report. It is what you send to a client, hand to an accountant, or keep as the month's paper trail.

Before you begin​

  • You need access to Accounting → Close and permission to run close actions. See who can do what.
  • Nothing else is required. You can export a month you have not started, one you are still reviewing, and one you closed months ago. The one month you cannot export is the one still running — see months you cannot export a pack for.
  • Decide first whether you want final numbers. A month that is not closed exports as PRELIMINARY — see Exporting a month that isn't closed yet.

Steps​

  1. Go to Accounting → Close.

  2. In Periods, select the month you want a pack for.

  3. Click Export pack in the month's header. It is there in every state: on its own on a closed month, beside Start close on an open one, and beside Re-check and Close period once the month is in review.

  4. Read the confirmation. Nothing downloads yet:

    Close pack export started — the download will appear in the job tray.

    The job tray icon in the top bar nudges to tell you where to look.

  5. Carry on with something else. The pack builds in the background, and you can leave the page or the Close tab while it does.

Hovering Export pack describes what you are about to get:

Download the full report pack as one XLSX workbook — cover sheet, checklist outcomes and all 9 reports. Open periods export as PRELIMINARY.

The last sentence disappears once the month is closed.

Export pack is greyed out while a close job is running — the month reads Closing… — because the figures are being snapshotted underneath you. Hovering it while it is greyed says nothing, so the month's Closing… status is the only explanation on offer. Wait for the close to finish, then export.

Export pack is also greyed out if you do not have permission to run close actions — and that one carries no explanation either. The place the reason is written is Start close, on a month that hasn't been started yet:

You do not have permission to run close actions.

On a month already in review there is no Start close button, so a greyed Export pack is all you get. If the button is dim and the month does not read Closing…, it is the permission — ask an administrator for it. There is no route around it: the same request is refused if it reaches SKU.io another way. See who can do what.

Where the finished pack turns up​

  1. Open the job tray from the top bar. Your export is listed as Export Month-End Close Pack: followed by the month, for example Export Month-End Close Pack: 2026-06.

  2. Watch the progress line. It counts through nine items — one per report — with a percentage, under a message naming the month being built.

  3. When it finishes you get a notification headed Export Ready: followed by the job's name, reading "9 records exported in" however long it took, and an on-screen message:

    Close pack ready — grab the download from the job tray.

  4. Click Download on the job's entry in the tray. The file saves as a spreadsheet workbook named for the month and the moment it was built, such as close-pack-2026-06-2026-09-12-13-57-23.xlsx, and opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.

The nine records in that completion message are the nine reports, not nine rows of data — a pack for a busy month runs to thousands of rows. For what each sheet holds, see the close pack workbook and close pack: columns on every report sheet.

The tray keeps finished jobs until you dismiss them, and View all jobs at the bottom of the tray opens the full history if you have already cleared it.

Exporting a month that isn't closed yet​

Exporting before you close is a supported workflow, not a workaround — bookkeepers routinely send a draft pack for client review before locking the month. What you get is marked so nobody mistakes it for the final version:

  • The cover sheet carries a PRELIMINARY row reading "Period is not closed — figures may still change."
  • Every report sheet repeats the same warning, and each one is stamped Live rather than As at close.

Preliminary figures are calculated fresh at the moment you export. Two packs taken minutes apart can legitimately differ — an order fulfilled between them, a cost corrected, an entry synced. That is the point of the stamp: only a closed month gives you a pack that stops moving. See frozen figures, staleness and drift.

Exporting a month you have never started is allowed too. It records the month so the pack has something to describe, but it does not start the close — the month stays Open, no checklist is created, and the cover sheet has no Checklist block. To get the checklist into the pack, start the close first.

That record does show up in one place. A month nobody has touched carries no counter in the Periods rail at all; once you have exported it, the rail shows 0/0 beside a month that still reads Open. Nothing has been started — the month has a record, and the record has no checklist in it yet.

Cancelling or recovering an export​

  • To cancel, click the stop button on the job's entry in the tray while it is still running. The build stops between reports, and a cancelled export leaves nothing to download — not a partial workbook.
  • A failed export shows (FAILED) on its tray entry with the reason underneath. The tray does not restart it for you. Click Retry on that entry to run it again, or go back to the month and click Export pack.
  • Starting another export is always safe. Each run writes its own file, so a new one never overwrites the last, and you can keep both.
  • A very large month can run out of time. An export is allowed ten minutes; past that it stops and reports the failure. Try it again — a retry often succeeds when the system is quieter. If the same month fails repeatedly, contact support rather than re-running it indefinitely.

How long a downloaded pack stays available​

Export files are cleaned up automatically once they are more than a week old, and the tidy-up runs daily. After that the tray entry survives but its file does not. Clicking Download gets you no workbook — SKU.io answers:

Export file is no longer available. Please regenerate the export.

Regenerating is the fix, and for a closed month it costs you nothing: a closed month exports its frozen figures, so a pack you rebuild today matches the one you downloaded at the time, page for page. A month that is still open is a different story — regenerating gives you today's preliminary figures, not the ones you had.

Treat the job tray as a delivery mechanism, not a filing cabinet. Save the workbook to your own document store, or attach it to the month's records, as soon as you download it.

Months you cannot export a pack for​

Some months are refused before you get anywhere near Export pack. When that happens the month's whole panel — header, checklist, report pack and buttons alike — is replaced by a one-line message and a Retry button. There is no Export pack to click, so the answer is to pick a different month, not to try again.

  • The month that is still running. The current month sits at the top of Periods, but selecting it answers that the period is in the future — "Period 2026-09 is in the future.", naming the month you are in. Wait until the month has ended — the last completed month, and everything before it, opens normally.
  • A month before your accounting start date. SKU.io answers that the period "predates the accounting start / cutover floor — it is frozen history". There is nothing there for the pack to report. You reach this one by following an old bookmark or a hand-typed link, not from the rail.

Go back to Accounting → Close and pick a month the rail actually opens. See which months you can close.

Next steps​

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