Summary
A disciplined month-end close separates financials you can hand to your bank from financials you have to explain. On September 29, 2026, Mary Mizell, Manager of .NET ERP Accounting Services and Support at Datacor, presented Datacor’s end-of-period checklist in its .NET ERP. She also covered ways to shorten close time and a repeatable method for tracking down reconciliation errors. Access to the full recording is above.
What Should a Month-End Close Checklist Include?
Datacor’s month-end close checklist has 14 steps, grouped into six phases and done in order:
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Prepare (steps 1–3): Open the new posting period. Verify that every transaction is entered, including purchase order receipts, batch tickets, supplier invoices, customer invoices, payments and manual journal entries. Then save inventory quantities and values as a fixed snapshot.
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Post (step 4): Post all modules to the general ledger, then close them so no one adds transactions during reconciliation.
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Reconcile (steps 5–10): Reconcile cash first, then accounts payable, PO clearing, accounts receivable, sales and inventory.
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Adjust (steps 11–12): Reclass batch manufacturing fixed costs and revalue foreign currency balances, if they apply.
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Review (step 13): Review general ledger detail and the trial balance, and make any adjusting entries.
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Close the year (step 14): At fiscal year-end, close the income statement to retained earnings.
Why Do Month-End Reconciliations Fall Out of Balance?
Most out-of-balance reconciliations trace back to four errors:
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Manual journal entries posted directly to AP, AR or inventory control accounts.
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Transactions dated to the wrong posting month.
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Duplicate entries, most often supplier vouchers entered after the user clicked past a warning.
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Transactions posted out of order, such as a check posted to an earlier month than its voucher.
Mizell recommends keeping no more than two posting months open at once, and recommends reconciling cash first, so that bank-only activity like auto-drafts and unexpected wires gets entered before the subledgers are reconciled. When something doesn’t balance, follow four steps: identify the problem, narrow it to a posting month and transaction, resolve it (often by unposting the affected module), and verify that the fix worked.
How Can Datacor ERP Help You Close the Books Faster?
Several built-in tools prevent errors instead of finding them after the fact:
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GL account restrictions limit which general ledger accounts users can choose in each area of the system, which stops miscoding at entry.
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A financial reconciliation analyzer tests each module by posting period and points to the exact transactions that fail.
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Standard journal entry templates make recurring entries, like payroll and depreciation, faster and harder to forget.
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A redesigned voucher entry screen locks posted vouchers to prevent reversal errors.
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Modernized posting modules add stricter error handling, which catches problems before they reach the general ledger. A common cadence Mizell sees runs on three dates:
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Transactions are finished by the fifth day of the month.
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Reconciliation takes a few hours.
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Reviewed financial statements are ready by the fifteenth.
Watch the Full Session
The recording walks through every checklist step, shows each module live and includes attendee Q&A. Current customers with business-specific questions can submit a ticket through the Datacor support portal.
Evaluating ERP for your process manufacturing business? Contact us to see how Datacor ERP keeps your close on schedule.
