Monthly Bookkeeping Calendar: What Happens on Which Day

A real monthly bookkeeping calendar closes the month by the 10th: statements pulled and every transaction present by day 3, categorization and payroll tied by day 6, every account reconciled by day 8, one question list answered and the reports out by the 10th. Same sequence, same days, every month. If your bookkeeper can’t tell you what happens on which day, the month isn’t being closed. It’s being caught up.

We run an accounting firm, and this is our calendar for every client. It isn’t a secret and it isn’t complicated. It’s the thing most owners have never seen, because nobody showed them what “monthly bookkeeping” actually consists of.

What does a bookkeeper do each week of the month?

Here’s ours, day by day. The days are business days from the first of the month following the one being closed.

Days 1 to 3: every transaction present

The month can’t be closed until everything that happened in it is in the books. The first three days are about completeness, not correctness.

• Statements pulled. Every bank account, credit card, loan, line of credit, and merchant processor. Some of these arrive by feed. Some have to be downloaded from a portal that makes it deliberately hard. Either way, by day 3 we have the statement for every account, and the statement is the authority, not the feed.
• Feeds checked against statements for gaps. A bank feed drops transactions more often than people think: a feed that disconnected for four days in the middle of the month, a card that was reissued, a duplicate import. The statement shows what the feed missed.
• Bills and invoices entered. Vendor bills received, customer invoices issued, so accounts payable and receivable reflect the month.
• Payroll reports pulled. Every run for the month, from the payroll system.

At the end of day 3, the books contain every transaction that touched the business in the month. Nothing has been categorized yet, and that’s fine.

Days 3 to 6: rules, receipts, payroll tied

Now the transactions get named and coded.

• Categorization by rule. Most transactions match a rule written the first time that vendor appeared: this merchant is always fuel, that one is always software, this transfer is always a loan payment split between principal and interest. Rules do the routine work so a person’s attention goes to the exceptions.
• Every line gets a vendor. No category without a name. For checks, that means the check image. For card charges, the merchant. For transfers, the counterparty.
• Receipts matched. Receipts the client has sent in get attached to their transactions. Anything over a threshold with no receipt goes on the question list.
• Payroll tied. The payroll expense in the books equals the payroll reports. The liabilities on the balance sheet equal what’s still owed for taxes and benefits. If the books say one thing and the payroll system says another, the difference gets found now, not on the quarterly 941.
• Loans tied. Each loan balance in the books matches the lender’s statement for the month, with the payment split correctly.

By day 6, the exceptions are the only thing left: the transactions no rule covers and no receipt explains. Those go on the list.

Days 6 to 8: reconciliations

Every account, reconciled to its statement. The ending balance in the books equals the ending balance on the document, and every transaction on the statement is matched to a transaction in the books.

This is the step that separates a close from categorization, and it’s where the real problems surface. A deposit the customer says they made and the bank says they didn’t. A duplicate expense from a check that also came through as an ACH. A subscription that renewed on a card nobody remembered was still open. A merchant processor whose net deposit doesn’t match the sales system because of a chargeback.

Each of those is a small thing on day 7. Each is a large thing in March. The reconciliation reports for every account are saved, so anyone can see that the month was tied and to what.

Days 8 to 10: questions, then the close

By day 8 there’s a list of everything only the client can answer, and it goes out as one message. Not fifteen emails over three weeks. One list, with a deadline.

What was the $2,400 at the equipment dealer on the 14th? Is the transfer to your other LLC a loan or a distribution? Who is the vendor on check 3312? Did you get a receipt for the hotel on the 22nd?

The client answers in one sitting, the answers get booked, and the month closes. Reports go out on the 10th: the P&L, the balance sheet, and whatever else the client has asked for, with a short note on what changed and a call scheduled for anyone who wants to walk through it.

When should my monthly financials be ready?

By the 10th of the following month. Not because the 10th is special, but because it’s early enough that the numbers are useful. October’s reports on November 10 are a tool. October’s reports on December 20 are history.

If your reports arrive whenever they arrive, or arrive on a schedule but without reconciliation reports behind them, ask for the calendar. Any bookkeeper who’s actually closing the month has one, and can tell you what happens on day 3 and day 8.

What it isn’t

A monthly fee doesn’t make it a monthly close. Some bookkeeping arrangements are a cleanup spread over twelve invoices: the feed gets categorized every month, nothing gets reconciled, and in January someone discovers the year and rebuilds it under deadline. The owner paid every month and got a cleanup anyway.

The difference is visible in the calendar. A cleanup-in-installments has no day 8. Nothing is reconciled on a schedule, so there’s no date by which the month is provably right. The close has one, and it’s the same date every month.

What a CFO does with this number

A fractional CFO starts the month’s work on the 10th, with final numbers. The forecast gets updated from a bank balance the books agree with. The margin report runs from a month where every line has a vendor and a category. The estimate, the planning meeting, the hire decision, the price change, all of it starts from a closed month, and it starts on the 10th because that’s when the month is done.

Before the calendar, none of that has a starting point. The CFO’s first question is always “are these numbers final,” and if the answer is “mostly,” the answer is no.

Where we come in

This calendar, every client, every month. Statements by day 3, reconciliations by day 8, one question list, reports and a call by the 10th, with payroll tied by the same firm that ran it and the same people preparing the return in the spring. It’s what our monthly bookkeeping fee buys, and you can hold any other proposal up against it. If you’ve never been told what your bookkeeper does on which day, reach out. We’ll show you the calendar and tell you where yours is missing a step.

Frequently asked questions

When should monthly financials be ready?
By the 10th of the following month, with every account reconciled and the question list answered.

What happens in the first week?
Statements pulled, every transaction present, categorization by rule, receipts matched, payroll tied to the reports.

What’s a close schedule?
The fixed calendar of steps from statement pull to reports, ending on the same day every month.