The quality of a month-end close audit rises or falls with what is ready on the morning fieldwork starts. Incomplete binders do not make us villains; they simply shrink the window for fixing material items before freeze.
Stage these before T+1
- Trial balance exported as of the review date, with prior-period comparative
- Listing of manual journals posted in the final three close days
- Completed (or clearly marked draft) bank, AR, AP, prepaid, and accrual reconciliations
- Shipping and receiving reports covering the cut-off window
- Consolidation workbook and intercompany matching schedule, if multi-entity
Label drafts honestly
We would rather see a reconciliation marked “open — waiting on supplier statement” than a tidy PDF that hides a NT$900,000 plug. Honest labels become the first lines of the issues log and save hours of polite confusion.
Assign a same-day responder
Pick one close owner who can answer questions within a few hours. When answers wait overnight, fieldwork slips and the briefing lands after the CFO has already designed the board narrative.
Share this checklist with your team the week before we arrive. The scoping call goes faster when everyone already knows which folders matter.