The month end close checklist for finance teams running cards and expenses
Every month, someone on the finance team ends up hunting for a hotel receipt from three weeks ago. Multiply that by every cardholder in the company, and it's easy to see why the month-end close keeps slipping.
The month-end close, or just "the close" for short, is the work of getting your books complete, reconciled and reviewed before you lock the month. A month-end close checklist, sometimes called a monthly close checklist, lists those tasks in order.
This one is built for teams where corporate cards and employee expense reports make up a big share of the work, so it starts with receipts and card transactions before moving on to bank reconciliations, accruals, review, and archiving.
The goal is a close you can run the same way every month, with books you can hand to an auditor without a last-minute scramble.
Key takeaways
- Your month-end close goes faster when the team follows the same steps in the same order every month, and waiting on receipts and expense reports is usually what slows it down.
- The IRS generally asks businesses to keep records for three years, or six years if unreported income is more than 25% of the gross income on the return.
- Expensify pairs receipts with imported card transactions automatically, so reconciliation starts with a shorter list.
- Expenses that miss the cutoff are best handled with an accrual, so you can close on time instead of waiting on people.
- Set the submission cutoff before the month ends, so employees know the deadline ahead of time.
What the month-end close has to cover
Every close, no matter the size of the team, covers the same five groups of work, and the card and expense tasks sit inside them. Here they are in summary:
Completeness. Every expense, card transaction, invoice, and payment for the month is in the books.
Reconciliation. Bank and card balances match their statements, and expense reconciliation ties every report back to its receipts and card transactions.
Accruals and adjustments. Anything that happened this month but hasn't been billed or submitted gets recorded.
Review. Someone checks the numbers against the budget and last month before they're final.
Archive. The period is locked, and the records behind it are saved where you can find them later.
Tools built for expense management for accounting teams mostly speed up the first two groups, while accruals, review, and archiving still need a person's judgment.
The month end close checklist
Here's the full accounting month-end close checklist, in order. Steps 1–4 are the card and expense work, which is where the close usually gets held up. Bank reconciliation and the AP and AR review don't depend on them, so a second person can start those while receipts are still coming in.
1. Set the submission cutoff
Pick the last day employees can submit expenses for the month, and announce it before the month ends, since every other step waits on it. Put the date on the team calendar so nobody can say they missed it.
2. Chase outstanding receipts
Follow up on card transactions that still have no receipt, starting as soon as the cutoff is set. Go after the biggest amounts first, and pick a date when you stop chasing and accrue instead.
3. Match card transactions to the statement
Once the card statements are out, import the month's card transactions and check that each card's total matches. A gap usually means a missing, duplicate, or pending transaction.
4. Clear the approval queue
Get every submitted report approved or sent back. Do this after receipts and card transactions are in, so approvers see complete reports.
5. Reconcile bank accounts
Match each bank account's balance to its statement and explain any differences. This can run alongside steps 2–4, since it only needs the bank statements.
6. Accrue for unsubmitted expenses
Record an estimate for expenses that happened this month but missed the cutoff. This comes after the approval queue is clear, because the accrual covers whatever is still missing.
7. Review AP and AR aging
Check unpaid bills and outstanding invoices for anything overdue, duplicated, or wrong. This can run once the month's bills and invoices are entered.
8. Post adjusting entries
Book accruals, prepaid expenses, depreciation, and any corrections. This comes after steps 6 and 7, since they tell you what needs adjusting.
9. Export to the accounting system and check the sync
Send approved expenses to your accounting system and confirm every report arrived with the right accounts and amounts. This needs the approval queue cleared and adjustments posted.
10. Run a variance review
Compare the month's numbers to the budget and to last month, and explain anything unusual. Save this for after all entries are in, so you're not explaining numbers that are about to change.
11. Lock the period and archive
Close the period in your accounting system so nobody can post to it, then save the records behind it. Do this only once every other step is finished.
Reconciling corporate card transactions
To keep corporate card expense reporting accurate and compliant, bring transactions in straight from the card feed, pair each one with a receipt, code it to the right account, and match the month's total to the card statement before you close.
Credit card reconciliation at month-end is mostly about handling the same few exceptions every month.
Transactions that post after the cutoff. Decide once whether you book card spend by transaction date or post date, and use that rule every month.
Pending charges. If a charge isn't on the statement yet, it belongs to next month's reconciliation.
Disputed charges. Keep them in the reconciliation with a note, and book the credit when the card issuer posts it.
Transactions with no receipt. Ask the cardholder for a receipt or a written explanation, and flag the transaction for review if neither turns up.
Refunds and credits. Match each refund to the original charge, so the net amount lands in the right account.
Shared charges. When one card charge covers several people or projects, split it before you code it, or the whole amount lands on one budget.
Compare each card's total for the period against its statement, then drill into any card that doesn't match, which is how statement matching in Expensify works.
Corporate card reconciliation software shortens the list of exceptions, since transactions import automatically and receipts get paired with them as they come in.
Chasing outstanding receipts without chasing people
Receipt follow-up is the most repetitive part of the close. A little structure keeps it from eating the week.
Start with who's missing receipts
Pull a list of card transactions that have no receipt, sorted by cardholder. That tells you exactly who to contact and what they owe you, so you're not sending a reminder to the entire company.
Set a threshold for what's worth chasing
Agree on a dollar threshold with your accountant. Small amounts may not be worth three follow-ups, while anything large or unusual always gets one.
Let automatic reminders do the follow-up
Automatic reminders handle most of the nagging, and when employees snap a photo with a receipt scanning app the moment they pay, there's nothing left to find at month-end.
Decide what happens when a receipt is lost
Your expense policy should say what happens when a receipt is truly lost. Some teams accept a signed explanation for smaller amounts, and the approver decides on anything bigger.
Know when to stop chasing and accrue
Once the cutoff has passed and the chasing date is up, accrue for what's missing and move on. The receipts can still come in next month and get attached to the right expense reports.
Accruing for expenses that haven't been submitted
When expenses miss the cutoff, record them as an accrued expense in the month they happened. Then reverse the accrual at the start of next month, when the real expense reports come in.
The estimate doesn't have to be perfect, but it does need a clear basis. Card transactions already imported but not yet on a report are the easiest starting point, since you know the exact amounts. For out-of-pocket spending you can't see yet, look at how much came in late over the last few months.
If the missing amount is too small to change anyone's decisions, many teams skip the accrual and book the expense when it arrives. Agree on that materiality threshold with your accountant, and write it down.
Keep a record of how you worked out the number, which transactions it covers, and when it was reversed, because an auditor will want to see how you got to the figure.
What audit ready means
A close is audit ready when your records are complete, every number traces back to a source document, and you've kept those documents for as long as you need to.
The IRS says to keep records for three years in most cases. That goes up to six years if you don't report income that you should have and it's more than 25% of the gross income on your return, and seven years if you claim a loss from worthless securities or a bad debt deduction.
Employment tax records need to be kept for at least four years. If you don't file a return, or file a fraudulent one, the IRS says to keep records indefinitely.
To check completeness, make sure every card transaction for the month is on an approved report or covered by the accrual. To check traceability, pick any expense in the ledger and see whether you can pull up the receipt, the approval, and the card transaction behind it in a couple of clicks.
That's why archiving belongs in the close itself. Save receipts, approvals, and reconciliations with each period, so pulling them for an auditor takes minutes. For the day-to-day habits that make all of it easier, see these tips on bookkeeping for small businesses.
How long the close should take
Ask ten controllers how long their close takes, and you'll hear ten different answers. Company size, the number of accounts, and how much still happens by hand all change the timeline. The part you can usually shrink is the repetitive work, like chasing receipts and keying in expenses, and taking it off the finance team's plate is the clearest way to shorten the close.
Deloitte's Q4 2025 CFO Signals survey of 200 finance chiefs found that 49% said their top priority for finance talent was automating processes to free up employees for higher-value work.
For one accountant at a nonprofit, that automation meant getting a full day back every month. Amina Mobasher, Accountant at IDEO.org, said that Expensify "saves our employees at least half a day every time they file an expense report, and it saves me at least one whole day every month because I no longer have to waste time with manual data entry, hounding employees to turn in their reports, or chasing down paperwork."
“Expensify took our chaotic mess of a process and replaced it with a simple, easy to use, all-in-one solution – a solution we badly needed. Expensify revolutionized our receipt and expense management process, and IDEO.org is a more efficient, better company for it.”
Learn how IDEO.org use Expensify's QuickBooks integration to make their expense reporting process easier than ever.
Where Expensify fits
Expensify handles the card and expense steps of the close, so a finance team can spend its time on review.
Receipts and card transactions arrive paired. Card transactions import automatically, and SmartScan reads each receipt and matches it to its transaction, so reconciliation starts with a shorter list.
Approvals clear before the cutoff. Reports route to the right approvers as they're submitted, instead of piling up at month-end.
Expenses export to your accounting system. Thanks to accounting integrations, approved expenses go to QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero, or Sage Intacct with their categories and tags already applied.
Ted Harris, Customer Success Leader & Enterprise Lead at Expensify, says the close step customers most often still do by hand is marking reports as paid, either in QuickBooks Online or in Expensify. Expensify already handles that step for them.
"Expensify has two-way reimbursement sync, so if payments are initiated from QBO, users are notified in Expensify, and reports are finalized automatically."
It works the same way in reverse, so a reimbursement paid through Expensify gets marked as paid in QuickBooks Online, too.
If you're still working from spreadsheets, start with a free expense report template, then move to Expensify when you're ready to take receipt chasing off your list.
FAQs about month-end close
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A typical month-end close process gets every transaction for the month into the books, reconciles bank and card accounts to their statements, records accruals and adjustments, reviews the results, and locks the period.
For teams with corporate cards and expense reports, it starts with a submission cutoff and receipt follow-up.
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The main steps are setting a submission cutoff, chasing receipts, matching card transactions to statements, clearing approvals, reconciling bank accounts, accruing for missing expenses, reviewing AP and AR aging, posting adjusting entries, exporting to the accounting system, running a variance review, and locking and archiving the period.
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Yes. Expensify's 11-step month-end close checklist template is available as a free download, with no form to fill out.
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Import the month's card transactions, pair each one with a receipt, and code it to the right account. Then match the total for each card to its statement, and deal with the exceptions, like pending charges, disputes and transactions with no receipt.
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Expenses submitted after the close are usually covered by an accrual. You record an estimate in the month the expense happened, reverse it at the start of the next month, and book the real expense when the report comes in.
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When keeping records for business tax purposes, the IRS generally says to keep them for three years. That rises to six years if you underreport income by more than 25% of the gross income on your return, and seven years for a worthless securities or bad debt claim.
Employment tax records need to be kept for at least four years.
