Month end close checklist

A monthly close is the small ritual that transforms a pile of transactions into a coherent set of reports the board can act on. This article walks you through it as a checklist. Total time on the first run: about 45 minutes. After you’ve done it 3 or 4 times: 20 to 30 minutes.

The goal: by the time you’re done, you’ll have produced every report your board needs, reconciled against the bank, and locked the books so prior periods don’t get accidentally edited.

When to do this

The first week of each month, after your bank statement has arrived. Most US banks email or post statements within 2 to 5 business days of month end. Aim to complete the close by the 10th of the month.

What you need before starting

• Your bank statement(s) for the prior month, opened in a separate window or printed.
• 30 to 45 minutes of uninterrupted time.
• The Home Herald admin app, logged in.

The checklist

1. Confirm transactions are recorded

Go to Manage > Transactions and filter by date for last month. Skim the list:

• Are all the dues payments in (resident checks, online payments)?
• Are all the vendor bills logged (landscaping, pool, insurance)?
• Did you mark the bills you actually paid as Paid?

If any are missing, add them now. For paper checks from residents that haven’t been recorded, add them as PAYMENT records via the + Add Transaction button.

For vendor bills, use Add Expense on the same chooser modal.

2. Reconcile each cash account

Go to Manage > Accounts. For each active account, click Reconcile.

Walk through the four step flow (detailed in the bank reconciliation article):

1. Confirm the period is last month.
2. Enter the bank statement opening and ending balance.
3. Tick each transaction that appears on the statement.
4. Use Add Adjustment for anything on the bank statement that’s missing from the system (bank service charges, interest, etc.).
5. When the difference is $0, click Close.

Repeat for every account that has activity (Operating, Reserve if you used it, etc.).

The system will warn you if your statement opening doesn’t match the prior period’s ending. Investigate that mismatch before closing.

3. Spot check the Account Integrity Audit

Back on Manage > Accounts, expand the Account Integrity Audit panel and click Re-run Audit.

You’re looking for:

• Cash events: 0 missing accountId
• Paid expenses: 0 missing accountId
• Transfer pairs (if any): 0 unbalanced
• Balance reconciliation: matches

A green “Clean” chip means your books are mathematically consistent. If you see amber “Issues,” investigate before generating reports.

4. Pull the Profit & Loss report

Go to Manage > Reports > Profit & Loss.

1. Set the period to Last Month.
2. Toggle Compare prior period ON.
3. Review the revenue and expense lines. Anything unexpected?
4. Click PDF to download a board ready printout.

Sanity checks:

• Dues revenue should be roughly your community’s expected dues for the period.
• Net income should make rough sense vs your bank balance change.
• The cash sanity callout near the top tells you the gap between accrual revenue and actual cash collected. That gap should match the increase in receivables (visible on AR Aging).

5. Pull the AR Aging report

Go to Manage > Reports > AR Aging.

1. Set As of to the last day of the closed period.
2. Click PDF to download.
3. Skim the 90+ day buckets. Any new escalations?

This is the document for any collections decisions the board needs to make.

6. Pull the AP Aging report

Same flow at Manage > Reports > AP Aging:

1. Set As of to the last day of the closed period.
2. Click PDF.
3. Skim the 60+ day overdue bills. Anything that needs urgent payment?

7. Save and file

You now have:

• One reconciliation PDF per account
• One P&L PDF
• One AR Aging PDF
• One AP Aging PDF

File them in your community’s records folder (Google Drive, Dropbox, paper folder, whatever you use). Send copies to the board if your community expects monthly distribution.

8. Note any irregularities for the next board meeting

If you noticed anything unusual during the close (a mystery $50 charge, a deposit you couldn’t categorize, a vendor bill that doesn’t match the statement), make a note for discussion. The board will appreciate the heads up rather than discovering it during a meeting.

What this gives you

• Locked books for the period (soft locked, visible in the RECONCILED chip on each transaction).
• An audit trail showing who closed what, when, and against what bank balances.
• A consistent monthly packet for the board.
• Confidence that prior period reports won’t shift if a record gets edited (the warning prompts will catch it).

The first close: extra steps

If this is your first month using the close workflow:

1. Set up cash accounts first (cash accounts article) with accurate opening balances.
2. Run the Account Integrity Audit and click Run Account Backfill if you have legacy data without account tags.
3. The first reconciliation establishes the baseline. The next month’s reconciliation will compare opening balances automatically.

Skipping a month

Try not to. The longer you go between closes, the harder it is to remember what each transaction was for, and the more likely you’ll have data drift you can’t easily explain.

If you do skip a month: catch up in chronological order. Close month 1 first, then move to month 2. Don’t try to reconcile two months in one pass; the tooling intentionally doesn’t support that.

Templates and customizing

Want a different report set or different bucket cutoffs? Open a feature request through the Feedback form (top right user menu). The current set covers what most volunteer boards need; your edge case might be common enough to add.

What you can stop doing

If you’ve been:

• Maintaining a separate spreadsheet to track AR by property
• Running QuickBooks just for the bank reconciliation
• Hand calculating who’s behind on dues
• Asking a bookkeeper to produce monthly reports

You can stop. The Home Herald monthly close produces all of those outputs faster, with a tighter audit trail, and without anyone needing accounting training. Treat it as the new normal for your community’s books.