Read the month's reports
Every month in Accounting → Close carries a Report pack: nine reports that describe the month from every angle a bookkeeper signs off on. Before the month is closed they rebuild each time you open them and are labelled preliminary; once you close the month, the copies saved at that moment become the month's numbers of record.
Before you begin
- Open Accounting → Close and select the month you want to read in the Periods rail on the left.
- Reading a report needs nothing beyond access to the accounting area. You don't need the permission that starts, closes or exports a month.
- You don't need a working Xero or QuickBooks connection. Every figure in the pack is computed from data already in SKU.io, so an expired or disconnected accounting provider can never blank the pack or stop a close. The single exception is the provider's own trial balance, which you fetch yourself — see capture your provider's trial balance.
Steps
- Go to Accounting → Close.
- In the Periods rail, click the month you want. The header shows the month, its status and its date range, for example Jun 1, 2026 – Jun 30, 2026.
- Scroll past Close checklist to the Report pack card. Nine report cards sit in a grid.
- Read the chip next to the Report pack heading before you read any figure. It says either Preliminary — period open or As at close — Sep 12, 2026. That chip tells you whether the numbers below can still move.
- Click a report card, for example Trial Balance. The report opens in a dialog over the page.
- Read the chips beside the report name — Snapshot or Live, plus Preliminary, Stale or Snapshot missing when they apply. The line underneath reads Snapshotted or Computed followed by the time the figures were produced.
- Read the totals strip at the top of the dialog, then the table below it. Every number carries two decimals and thousands separators — counts included, so nine compared accounts reads 9.00. Yes/no columns print true or false in lower case, account codes and names print as plain text, and anything with no value shows a dash. A wide table scrolls sideways inside the dialog, so the page itself never scrolls left and right.
- Click the × in the dialog's top-right corner to go back to the pack, then open the next report.
How far down the reports go
The close doesn't compute a parallel set of figures. Each report is the one you already read elsewhere in SKU.io, scoped to the month or taken as at the last day of the month. What matters while you're reading is the grain — what one row of the table in front of you stands for:
| Report | One row is |
|---|---|
| Income Statement | An account |
| Balance Sheet | An account, tagged with its section |
| Trial Balance | An account |
| Inventory Valuation | A warehouse |
| COGS | A sales channel |
| GINR Balance | One of its four components — Invoiced, Received, Discrepancies, Adjustments |
| Reconciliation Summary | An accounting connection |
| Trial Balance Reconciliation | A compared account |
| Sync Category Reconciliation | A transaction category |
For what each report covers, and what every column and total on it means, see close pack: columns on every report sheet. The column names are the same on screen as in the exported workbook; only the formatting of the values differs.
Three things follow from the grain:
- Nothing goes below statement level. Every report stops at an account, warehouse, sales channel, category or connection. None of them lists the individual transactions behind a figure — for those, go to the ledger or open the report a check points at.
- You can find most of them elsewhere. Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Accounting COGS and GINR Balance live on Accounting → Reports (see read your financial statements); Inventory Valuation lives under Insights → Inventory Valuation. Reading them in the pack has one advantage: the pack pins them to the month, and after a close it pins them to the figures you signed off on.
- Trial Balance is the exception. It exists only in the close pack — there is no Trial Balance card on Accounting → Reports.
The labels on a report card and inside a report
The Report pack has two surfaces, and they carry different labels. Read the card to triage the grid at a glance; open the report for the full set.
On a report card
Each card in the grid shows the report's name, a caption underneath it, and at most one chip.
| Label | Where | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| As at close — Sep 12, 2026 | Caption | The month is closed and this report has a saved copy — that's what opening it gives you |
| Preliminary | Caption | Opening this gives freshly computed figures that can still move. Any month that isn't closed reads this, and so does a closed month missing this report's saved copy |
| Superseded (amber) | Chip | This month was reopened, so the figures saved at the last close no longer apply |
| Stale (amber) | Chip | The month is closed, but its saved copy predates a reopen |
The caption is always one or the other. The chip is Superseded, Stale or nothing at all — never both, and never any of the labels in the next table. Hovering either chip explains it; the wording is in after a reopen below.
Inside an open report
| Label | Colour | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Snapshot | Green | The figures saved when the month was closed |
| Live | Blue | Recomputed the moment you opened the report |
| Preliminary | Amber | These numbers can still change |
| Stale | Amber | The saved copy predates a reopen |
| Snapshot missing | Red | A closed month with no saved copy of this report |
Snapshot and Live always appear — one or the other. The rest appear only when they apply, and more than one can appear at once: a closed month with no saved copy of a report shows Live, Preliminary and Snapshot missing together.
Superseded is a card label and nothing else. Open a report on a reopened month and the dialog reads Live and Preliminary instead — which is the same message told the other way round: the saved copy is not what you are being shown.
Preliminary figures versus the numbers of record
The chip next to the Report pack heading is the fastest way to tell which set of figures you're looking at.
- Preliminary — period open (amber). The month is not closed. Every report is rebuilt when you open it, so today's figures and tomorrow's can differ — an entry posted overnight, a cost corrected, a return processed. Read them to find problems, not to quote to anyone.
- As at close — Sep 12, 2026 (green). The month is closed. Each card shows the same As at close caption, and opening a report gives you the figures frozen at the moment of the close, marked Snapshot. These are the month's numbers of record, and they no longer move on their own — that's the point of closing. See what closing does to your books.
To prove a closed month's figures still match what you signed off, use Verify — see verify a closed month.
After a reopen: Superseded and Stale
Reopening a month removes its lock and keeps the saved copies, flagged as no longer current. What you see afterwards depends on where the month now stands:
- On a reopened month, each card carries a Superseded chip. Hovering it reads: "The figures saved at the last close no longer apply — this month was reopened. Opening this shows live figures instead. Close the month again to save a new set." The card caption goes back to Preliminary, and opening the report gives you freshly computed figures marked Live and Preliminary — which is what you want, because the whole reason to reopen a month is to post something into it.
- On a closed month whose saved copy predates a reopen, the card carries a Stale chip instead: "This snapshot predates a reopen — numbers may have moved since. Re-close the period to refresh it."
Either way, the remedy is the same: close the month again. Closing takes a fresh set of copies and the flag clears. See reopen a closed month and frozen figures, staleness and drift.
A closed month missing a saved report
Open a report on a closed month and you may get a red banner instead of the usual Snapshot chip:
This closed period has no saved snapshot for this report — the figures below are a live recompute, not the authoritative close numbers. This indicates an integrity gap; re-verify the period.
Treat that as an integrity problem, not a cosmetic gap. A closed month is supposed to carry all nine saved copies; a missing one means you can no longer prove what this report said when the month was signed off. The figures on screen are honest — they're recomputed from the books as they stand now — but they aren't the close figures, and the chips say so: Live, Preliminary and Snapshot missing.
The same condition shows up in two other places, so you can't miss it: Verify lists that report as snapshot missing and refuses to report a clean result, and the exported workbook repeats the warning on that report's sheet. The way back to a complete pack is to reopen the month and close it again.
A report that could not be produced
Some reports depend on setup elsewhere in SKU.io. When one of them can't be built for the month, it isn't silently dropped — it's saved as unavailable, and opening it shows an amber banner:
This report could not be produced for the period, so it holds no figures and was not verified.
Underneath, in smaller text, is the reason SKU.io recorded at the time. Three things are worth knowing:
- One unbuildable report never aborts a close. The other eight save normally and the month closes; the unavailable one is recorded as part of the pack, with its reason attached.
- Verify won't pretend it agrees. A report with no figures can't have drifted, so Verify lists it as could not be produced and says how many reports weren't verified, rather than counting it as a match.
- Fixing the cause and closing again produces a complete pack. Sort out the missing setup the reason points at, reopen the month, then close it again.
A report with nothing in it
An empty report shows No rows for this period in the middle of the dialog. Totals, when the report has any, still appear above it — so a report can legitimately show a zero total and no rows.
That's the normal answer for a report that doesn't apply to your business rather than a failure: no inventory means an empty Inventory Valuation, no accounting connection means an empty Reconciliation Summary and Trial Balance Reconciliation, and a month with no sales means an empty COGS. An empty Trial Balance Reconciliation on a business that does have a connection usually means something else — nobody has captured the provider's trial balance for that month end yet. See capture your provider's trial balance.
Open the report a check is about
Some checklist rows quote a number that lives in one of these reports — "2 of 9 accounts out · 1,301.15 total variance", "4 of 8 categories unsettled · 6,783.55", and the three Review items. Those rows carry a report icon at the right-hand end, and its tooltip reads Open this report.
Click it and the report opens in place, in the same dialog the pack uses, instead of sending you off to Accounting → Reports to hunt for the figure yourself. Rows whose fix lives on another screen carry an arrow labelled Open the fixing surface instead — see fix a failing check.
Two reports worth extra care
Trial Balance
Trial Balance is the report bookkeepers reach for first and the one report the pack adds to SKU.io. Its totals strip reads Total Opening, Total Debits, Total Credits and Total Closing — and the one figure to read first is the pair in the middle. On balanced books total debits equal total credits; a mismatch between those two is the thing to chase, and it's the same condition the All entries balanced check reports on the checklist. Every column is described in close pack: columns on every report sheet.
Two more things to know about it:
- The closing balances here are the SKU.io side of the provider comparison. When Trial Balance Reconciliation says an account is out, it's this closing balance it's comparing against your provider's figure.
- Like the other statements, it excludes discarded entries and the member rows inside a batch, so it agrees with the Income Statement and Balance Sheet rather than double-counting batched activity. See batches and the close.
Trial Balance Reconciliation lists matched accounts only
Trial Balance Reconciliation is a matched-pair comparison, joined on account code: Connection, Account Code, Account Name, Sku Balance, Provider Balance, Variance and In Tolerance. An account that exists on only one side — in SKU.io but not at your provider, or the reverse — gets no row. Nothing on screen names those accounts or counts them for you.
That matters because of what the totals strip does with them. Accounts Reconciled and the rows below it cover matched accounts. But an account your provider carries a balance on and SKU.io doesn't is still added to Accounts Out Of Balance and its amount into Total Abs Variance — invisibly, because it has no row. So if the headline count is higher than the number of false rows you can count, the difference is accounts your provider has and SKU.io does not.
An account SKU.io has and your provider does not is treated the other way: it is left out of the table and out of the totals, so it can't inflate the count — but it also won't tell you it exists.
Don't read Reconciliation Summary's Sku Only Count and Provider Only Count as the answer. Those count documents that matched on only one side, not accounts, and they come from a different comparison.
Either way the place to chase the mismatch is Accounting → Reconciliation, not this report. See reconciling with your accounting provider.
On screen versus in the exported workbook
The pack exports as one workbook from Export pack in the month's header — see export the close pack. Reading on screen is not the same experience:
- There is no per-report download. The report dialog has no download control. The only file the close produces is the whole pack, with every report in it.
- The chips are on-screen only. Superseded exists on the report cards and Stale on the cards and inside an open report; neither is written into the workbook. If you're checking whether a saved copy still applies after a reopen, do it on screen.
- Warnings travel with the workbook. Each report's sheet opens with the report name and either As at close or Live, then Generated at, then whichever warning applies as its own row: PRELIMINARY, SNAPSHOT MISSING or REPORT UNAVAILABLE. A report that is legitimately empty carries a Note row saying why. Nobody opening the file mistakes an empty sheet for a broken export. The exact wording of each row is in the close pack workbook.
- Figures are formatted differently, and blanks carry meaning. On screen every
number gets two decimals and thousands separators, and yes/no columns read true
or false. In the workbook money is a plain number with no separators and counts
are whole numbers — but a yes reads
TRUEand a no is an empty cell. There is noFALSEanywhere in the file, and a nil amount is written as an empty cell too. So filter a workbook column for blanks rather than forFALSEor0: an auditor who filters In Tolerance forFALSEgets nothing back and reads a broken month as a clean one. The full list of what the workbook writes blank is in the close pack workbook. - One thing neither surface shows. Trial Balance Reconciliation lists only accounts that exist on both sides, on screen and in the file alike. If you need the accounts that exist on one side only, go to Accounting → Reconciliation.