GoldFinch Financial Closing provides a structured process to review accounting activity, reconcile financial balances, and prepare reliable financial statements at the end of an accounting period.
The closing process helps organizations confirm that transactions are complete, subsidiary balances agree with the General Ledger, exceptions are resolved, and posting activity is appropriately controlled before finalizing financial results.
Key Objectives
A financial close generally helps an organization:
- Confirm that transactions for the period have been recorded
- Review outstanding or incomplete activity
- Reconcile subsidiary records with the General Ledger
- Record necessary accruals and adjustments
- Validate financial-reporting balances
- Restrict posting to completed periods
- Prepare financial statements for review
- Maintain supporting documentation and an audit trail
The procedures required depend on the organization’s accounting policies, operational activity, and GoldFinch configuration.
Month-End Closing
Month-end closing focuses on completing and validating financial activity for the reporting period.
A typical month-end process may include:
- Review transactions awaiting approval or posting
- Complete applicable customer and vendor invoicing
- Review cash receipts and vendor payments
- Reconcile Accounts Receivable with the General Ledger
- Reconcile Accounts Payable with the General Ledger
- Complete bank reconciliations
- Review inventory costing and valuation, when applicable
- Record accruals, adjustments, and recurring journals
- Validate General Ledger balances and financial reports
- Update posting controls for the completed period
Organizations may add other procedures based on their reporting and compliance requirements.
Accounts Receivable Review
Accounting teams should review customer activity and confirm that:
- Customer invoices and credit memos are complete
- Customer receipts have been recorded
- Payments and credits have been applied appropriately
- Outstanding balances have been reviewed
- Accounts Receivable aging agrees with the related General Ledger accounts
Investigate unusual, overdue, or unapplied balances before completing the close.
Accounts Payable Review
The Accounts Payable review helps confirm that:
- Vendor invoices and credits have been recorded
- Vendor payments are complete and properly applied
- Outstanding obligations have been reviewed
- Accrued expenses have been considered
- Accounts Payable aging agrees with the related General Ledger accounts
Identify and address transactions awaiting approval or documentation according to the organization’s policies.
Bank Reconciliation
Reconcile each bank account through the applicable period-end date.
The reconciliation process helps identify:
- Outstanding checks and payments
- Deposits in transit
- Bank fees and interest
- Missing or duplicated transactions
- Unmatched bank activity
- Differences between bank and General Ledger balances
Document unresolved items and assign them for follow-up.
Inventory and Cost Review
Organizations using inventory functionality should review inventory quantities, costs, and related General Ledger balances as part of the close.
This review may include:
- Completing applicable shipments and receipts
- Posting related sales and purchase invoices
- Completing production activity
- Reviewing expected or unposted inventory costs
- Confirming that cost-adjustment processing is current
- Reconciling inventory valuation with the General Ledger
- Recording appropriate inventory accruals
Inventory procedures apply only to organizations using the relevant GoldFinch ERP and accounting capabilities.
General Ledger Review
Before finalizing the period, authorized users should review the General Ledger for completeness and accuracy.
The review may include:
- Trial Balance
- Unposted journals
- Unusual or unexpected account balances
- Suspense or clearing accounts
- Intercompany balances
- Foreign-currency activity
- Recurring entries
- Accruals and reclassifications
- Financial-dimension classifications
- Current-period and prior-period comparisons
Investigate and correct material differences through appropriately reviewed transactions.
Financial Reporting Validation
After completing reconciliations and adjustments, accounting teams can review the period’s financial statements.
Reports may include:
- Balance Sheet
- Income Statement
- Cash Flow Statement
- Trial Balance
- General Ledger detail
- Accounts Receivable aging
- Accounts Payable aging
- Budget-to-actual reports
- Company-level or consolidated statements
Organizations should confirm that reported balances agree with the underlying accounting activity and supporting reconciliations.
Soft Close and Hard Close
GoldFinch can support different levels of posting control.
Soft Close
A soft close uses authorized posting-date ranges to restrict routine posting into a completed period while allowing designated users to make approved adjustments when necessary.
Hard Close
A hard close prevents additional transactions from being posted into a closed accounting period.
Organizations should choose the appropriate closing method based on their financial controls, consolidation requirements, and accounting policies.
Year-End Closing
Year-end closing includes the applicable month-end procedures together with additional activities required to complete the fiscal year.
These may include:
- Final account reconciliations
- Year-end accruals and adjustments
- Fixed asset and depreciation review
- Foreign-currency review
- Intercompany reconciliation
- Consolidation and elimination entries
- Income-statement closing
- Retained earnings review
- Final financial statements
- Audit and tax-support preparation
Coordinate the exact process with the organization’s accounting leadership and external advisors, as appropriate.
Closing Multiple Companies and Ledgers
Organizations with multiple companies, ledgers, or currencies may require additional procedures, including:
- Completing each company’s close
- Reconciling intercompany balances
- Reviewing currency conversions
- Preparing elimination entries
- Completing consolidation
- Validating entity-level and consolidated reports
Review each entity’s accounting records before finalizing consolidated results.
Financial Control and Accountability
A well-managed closing process should establish:
- Clearly assigned responsibilities
- Defined deadlines
- Appropriate review and approval
- Reconciliation documentation
- Controlled posting access
- Resolution of material exceptions
- Retention of supporting records
- Final management review
Salesforce permissions, approvals, reports, dashboards, and record history can support these controls within the GoldFinch environment.
Related Capabilities
- General Ledger
- Financial Reporting
- Accounts Receivable
- Accounts Payable
- Bank Reconciliation and Bank Connect
- Fixed Asset Management
- Multi-Company and Multi-Currency Accounting
- Financial Consolidation
- Recurring Transactions
Detailed month-end and year-end checklists, reconciliation procedures, posting controls, inventory analysis, corrective utilities, and troubleshooting resources are available to signed-in GoldFinch customers and approved partners.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.