There are many reasons to build a month end template. Obviously, to keep organized. Second, don’t forget anything. Third, be able to keep progress flowing. Last, let others in your office, who may be posting entries, work in unison with you.

Okay, so those are the OBVIOUS reasons, but why you ask yourself? I’m sure many of you are thinking, “duh, I mean come on, I do this every month, I know what I need to do Don.” Well, that’s the same thing I told myself, but it seemed like every month something goofy would pop up, get me and my office out of our normal routine and then BAM it hit us: “Did I remember to accrue this? or Did Betty accrue that? or…???” All of sudden we’re playing reactive catch-up, stressing if we’ll meet our deadlines, etc. instead of breezing through the month end. Finally, after a good month, that should’ve been a no-brainer to close, it hit me. Why did this keep occurring? So, falling back on my military training, I conducted an AAR (After Action Report) on the month end. Guess what I found, almost all of our “issues” dealt with breakdowns in communication. A Month End Template is nothing more than a clear simple way to communicate to everyone if used properly.

While I was at AutoNation, I found myself in charge of the largest accounting office in the whole company at the time. This group of stores had 6 locations, 11 Franchises and sold almost 1,000 units a month. Lump on top of that, we were the first group scheduled to go into AutoNation’s Shared Service Center after the disastrous initial launch in Dallas (I know, I went through as a GM of a store, but that’s another story). Don’t get me wrong, I had some good people in my office, but by no means were they the best accounting office in the industry. Despite all of this, we closed our months, for all stores, in 3 business days, consistently, month end/month out. How did we do this? We had Month End templates that we set up for each store. All of our JEs were there, we knew right away if an entry had been posted or not, and always knew what still needed to be done. It made us really efficient and a well oiled machine.

After awhile, all the other Controllers started asking how we made month end look so easy. I’d show them our template and how we used it. It was sooooo simple, most of them would go “That’s it????” Yea, that’s it! Now here’s the catch, you have to make the time, sit down and actually do it! I would love to take credit for inventing the month end template, however, I took the things I observed from other Controllers that applied to our office, discussed thoroughly with my office managers and leads, and then, during month ends, took the time to adjust the template as needed.

Those of you who are members of the site, you can download a sample Month End Template by Clicking Here. If you have any questions on how to adapt it to your situation, i.e. CDK or Reynolds, etc, don’t hestiate to ask of you can click here to read up on Power Posting.

Hope my little time on the Soap Box helps you have a smoother month end!

Don