A Practical Month-End Close Checklist for Business Central
By Kaspar Kasper, Founder & Senior Solution Architect· 3 min read
Most finance teams moving to Business Central close faster within a few months, but only once the close follows the same sequence every time. The order matters: inventory cost must be adjusted before you reconcile inventory, and subledgers must be complete before you lock the period. Here is the checklist we use with clients, roughly in the order we run it.
1. Subledger cut-off
- Sales: post all shipments and invoices for the month. Review the list of shipped-not-invoiced orders and decide what should be invoiced or accrued.
- Purchasing: post receipts and vendor invoices received. Review received-not-invoiced purchase lines; with expected cost posting on, these already sit in interim accounts.
- Inventory and production: post outstanding consumption and output, finish production orders that are complete, and post physical inventory or cycle count adjustments.
- Projects: post timesheets, usage and project invoices for the month.
2. Inventory cost
- Assign outstanding item charges such as freight and duty to the receipts they belong to.
- Run Adjust Cost – Item Entries for all items.
- Run Post Inventory Cost to G/L if automatic cost posting is off.
- For projects, run Calculate WIP and Post WIP to G/L if you recognize work in process.
3. Bank and cash
- Import statements and complete bank account reconciliations for every account.
- Investigate unmatched items rather than carrying them forward.
- Confirm the bank account balance in the G/L equals the reconciled statement balance.
4. Accruals, prepayments and recurring entries
- Post accruals for expenses incurred but not yet invoiced, ideally using recurring general journals with reversing entries so they clear automatically next month.
- Review deferral schedules so the revenue and expense recognized in the period match what you expect.
- Post payroll journals if payroll is processed outside Business Central.
5. Fixed assets
- Make sure acquisitions and disposals for the month are posted.
- Run Calculate Depreciation and post the resulting journal.
6. Foreign currency
If you trade in other currencies, update exchange rates and run the exchange rate adjustment batch job to revalue open receivables, payables and bank balances. Run it after all transactions for the month are posted.
7. Intercompany and consolidation
- Process the intercompany inbox and outbox so both sides of every transaction are posted.
- Reconcile intercompany balances between entities before consolidating.
8. Reconciliations
| Balance | Compare | With |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts receivable | Aged Accounts Receivable report | Receivables control account(s) |
| Accounts payable | Aged Accounts Payable report | Payables control account(s) |
| Inventory | Inventory Valuation report or Inventory – G/L Reconciliation | Inventory and interim accounts |
| Fixed assets | Fixed asset book value | Fixed asset accounts |
| Bank | Reconciled statement | Bank accounts |
If a control account does not match its subledger, the usual cause is a manual journal posted directly to the control account. Blocking direct posting on control accounts in the chart of accounts prevents most of these.
9. Review and report
- Run the trial balance and review unusual movements against last month and budget.
- Run your financial reports (account schedules) for the P&L, balance sheet and departmental views.
- Check for entries with missing dimension values if your management reporting depends on them.
10. Lock the period
- Move Allow Posting From forward in General Ledger Setup so the closed month cannot receive new entries.
- Set narrower posting windows for individual users in User Setup where needed, for example to give finance a few extra days while everyone else is locked out.
- At year-end, close the fiscal year in Accounting Periods and run Close Income Statement to move the result to retained earnings.
Make it a routine, not a project
Turn this list into a recurring checklist with owners and due dates, schedule the batch jobs that can run unattended, and review after each close what slowed you down. The first close after go-live is the one to over-prepare for, which is why we support every client through it as part of our implementations. If your close takes longer than it should, our support and training team can help, or talk to an architect.
