On October 17 there is still time to resolve an unsupported invoice or a deposit allocated to another customer. At year end, those cases compete with sales, payments, and leave. If your company closes in December, review the accumulated work now. Adapt the sequence when it uses another calendar. The aim is a close with known exceptions and assigned owners.
Find the last month actually closed
An updated report does not prove every month was reviewed. Identify the last period with reconciled banks, complete documents, and approved adjustments. Follow subsequent months from that point. Separate confirmed errors, missing evidence, and questions of accounting judgment. They require different responses: a correction, supporting material, or a documented professional decision.
Agree who reviews and approves. A small company's staff may cover several roles, but important decisions still need attributable owners. A list with a person and date beats a folder of unresolved items. Use Tario reports to begin and link each observation to the document or movement explaining it.
Clear old bank items before December
Import missing statements and check overlapping periods before adding files. Review internal transfers, deposits covering several invoices, and repeated merchant charges. Importing or approving a statement does not mean posting every line. Reconciliation needs supported decisions and exceptions somebody is investigating.
For each old item, record amount, currency, account, date, and missing support. If allocation is wrong, review the existing payment instead of creating another. If an operation was never recorded, follow the appropriate accounting flow. A global adjustment that removes differences without explaining them can hide a customer or vendor error.
Confirm document balances
Use receivables aging to review material balances, disputes, promises, and old documents. Apply supported payments and verify credit notes. For suppliers, inspect received purchases, pending payments, and duplicates. Age identifies places to look; the balance still needs commercial and documentary explanation.
A customer or supplier statement may reveal discrepancies early. Compare identical cutoffs and currencies, preserve the response, and document authorized corrections. Update the operating team's follow-up too. Otherwise collections keeps chasing a corrected balance or purchasing requests payment for a resolved obligation.
Plan the inventory count and ledger comparison
Define locations, owners, and a counting cutoff. Review open transfers, reservations, damaged items, and unexplained movements. Separate physical stock from availability. A reservation affects what can be sold without proving physical delivery. Preserve cutoff evidence if a later accounting comparison needs it.
Compare valuation and the inventory account using the same scope. Receipts, cost of sales, shrinkage, or manual entries can explain differences and require different treatment. Current valuation is not automatically a reconstruction of any past date. Confirm custody and location for assigned items and open repairs as well.
Fiscal documents and support
Gather XML, readable representations, Hacienda responses, and relevant attachments. Review fiscal status alongside payment status: a collected invoice can have a fiscal problem, while an accepted one may remain unpaid. Confirm applicable obligations and the official calendar with the responsible professional. This operating checklist does not set tax deadlines.
Tax reports and calculations should trace to evidence. Preserve closed-period outputs and authorize reopening through the proper process. Do not silently replace a file already relied upon. If historical detail is missing, disclose the limitation and seek support rather than reconstructing figures with proportions the document never provided.
Resolve first, confirm later
Schedule short reviews over the following weeks. Prioritize third-party documents with long turnaround and decisions requiring approval. Review future cash using open collections and expected payments, keeping estimates separate from facts. Seasonal decisions then use current information instead of making year end the first discussion of an old balance.
Tario brings banks, receivables, purchasing, inventory, documents, and reports together. Start with one month and a manageable exception list. Every material amount should end with a locatable source and someone able to explain its treatment. Preparation makes year-end close a confirmation of reviewed work rather than an annual reconstruction.