Controllership & close
Recurring journal entries draft themselves, reconciliations run and flag only the breaks, the close checklist tracks itself to completion, and the books are ready for review in days instead of weeks. The month-end fire drill becomes a checklist that mostly runs on its own.
Overview
The month-end close is a recurring emergency that everyone agrees to call a process. The same accruals get booked, the same accounts get reconciled, the same intercompany eliminations get run, the same checklist gets chased across the same six people, every month, forever, and it still takes ten business days and a weekend. The work is almost entirely repetitive. That is exactly why it is miserable, and exactly why a person should not be the one doing it.
This agent runs the mechanical spine of the close. It drafts recurring journal entries from their source data, performs balance-sheet reconciliations and surfaces only the items that actually break, tracks the close checklist and chases the owners, and prepares the consolidated statements for review. The controller stops keying entries and starts doing the job the title implies: reviewing, judging, signing off. Every entry the agent drafts is posted only after human approval, and every action lands in an audit trail clean enough to hand to the auditors without apology.
Capabilities
- Drafts recurring journal entries (accruals, prepaid amortization, depreciation, deferred revenue, payroll) from source data, ready for review and posting
- Performs balance-sheet reconciliations across cash, AP, AR, prepaids, accruals, and intercompany, flagging only unmatched or out-of-tolerance items
- Tracks the close checklist task by task, chasing owners on cadence and surfacing the critical-path items holding up the close
- Runs intercompany eliminations and consolidation against your entity structure, reconciling the eliminations before they hit the consolidated statements
- Prepares the consolidated financial statements and the close package for controller and CFO review, every figure traced to its entry
- Posts nothing unattended, routing every entry and adjustment through approval and logging it in a complete, exportable audit trail
Example Output
Close status, day 3, March month-end
Checklist progress: 41 of 52 tasks complete. On track for substantial completion by day 5 (trailing 6-month average: day 9).
Journal entries drafted and staged for review (14 total):
- Payroll accrual: $312K, calculated from Rippling against the 4 working days between the last pay date and period end. Source-traced.
- Prepaid insurance amortization: $18.4K, straight-line per schedule.
- Depreciation: $44.2K across the fixed-asset register, no additions this period.
- Deferred revenue release: $688K, recognized against the rev-rec schedule in NetSuite.
- Hosting accrual: $97K, estimated from the trailing run-rate pending the final invoice.
- (9 additional recurring entries, all source-traced and staged)
Reconciliations (12 accounts):
- 10 of 12 reconciled clean, tied to sub-ledger and bank.
- 2 flagged:
- AR sub-ledger to GL: $14,200 variance. The agent traced it to a customer credit memo issued March 31 and not yet posted to the GL. Correcting entry drafted. Routed to the controller.
- Intercompany (US to UK): $3,100 FX difference from rate timing. Within tolerance, flagged for visibility.
Critical path:
- Waiting on the final hosting invoice to true up the accrual (currently estimated). Owner: agent, auto-trued on receipt and re-flagged for approval.
- Waiting on the revenue team to confirm one $42K contract modification before the deferred-revenue entry is final. Owner: Dana, chased twice, due today.
Status: All clean entries staged for batch approval. Two reconciling items in the controller's queue. Nothing posted. The consolidated statements assemble automatically once the final two entries clear review.
Agent Workflow
Trigger on the close calendar
The agent kicks off against your close calendar, opening the checklist and the period the moment the cutoff is reached.
Draft recurring journal entries from source
The agent calculates and drafts the standard recurring entries (accruals, amortization, depreciation, deferred revenue, payroll) directly from their source data, with each figure traced to the schedule or transaction behind it.
Run reconciliations and flag only the breaks
The agent reconciles the balance-sheet accounts against sub-ledgers and bank data and surfaces only the unmatched or out-of-tolerance items. Clean accounts get a check mark, not a meeting.
Run intercompany eliminations and consolidation
For multi-entity structures, the agent runs the eliminations and consolidation against the entity map and reconciles the eliminations before they reach the consolidated statements.
Track the checklist and chase owners
The agent tracks every checklist task to completion, chases owners on cadence, and surfaces the critical-path items actually holding up the close rather than the ones that merely look open.
Assemble the close package
The agent assembles the consolidated statements and the close package for review, with every line traceable back to the entry that produced it.
Route entries for approval
The agent posts nothing on its own. Entries and adjustments route through approval, and the reviewer signs off on a clean, source-linked diff. Judgment stays with the controller.
Lock the period and archive the audit trail
On sign-off, the agent locks the period and archives a complete, exportable audit trail of every entry, reconciliation, and approval, so the audit confirms the close instead of reconstructing it.