Project Overview

Service Provided: Month-End Close Optimization & Automation

A continuing care retirement community (CCRC) partnered with S.K.I.L.L. Consultants to improve its overly manual and time-consuming month-end close process. The objective was to bring structure, consistency, and automation to critical accounting tasks—allowing the finance team to close faster, with greater accuracy and less stress.

Objective

The client’s finance team faced an unpredictable and lengthy month-end close cycle. Each period-end required excessive manual reconciliations, spreadsheet reviews, and last-minute adjustments. The goal was to standardize close procedures, clarify ownership, and automate recurring journal entries and reconciliations to free up capacity for analysis and planning.

Challenges

The CCRC’s accounting team was constrained by several challenges:

• Highly manual reconciliation and journal entry processes.
• Lack of standardized checklists or timelines across departments.
• Delayed visibility into accruals, prepaids, and revenue recognition.
• Limited automation for recurring entries and closing tasks.
• Inefficient coordination among accounting, operations, and finance teams.

S.K.I.L.L. Consultants was tasked with building a structured close calendar, introducing accountability checkpoints, and implementing automation for recurring and routine financial tasks.

Solutions Implemented

1. Comprehensive Close Process Mapping:
   We mapped every step of the month-end close—from reconciliations, accruals, and prepaids to revenue recognition, payables, receivables, inventory, and fixed assets—to identify bottlenecks and redundancies.
2. Standardized Checklists & Timelines:
   Created a clear close checklist outlining responsible parties, dependencies, and completion targets to ensure accountability and transparency.
3. Defined Roles & Responsibilities:
   Clarified ownership of each task across accounting and operations, ensuring smooth handoffs and minimizing confusion.
4. Automation of Recurring Entries & Reconciliations:
   Introduced automation tools to process standard journal entries, recurring adjustments, and account reconciliations—cutting down manual effort and errors.
5. Performance Monitoring & Reporting:
   Established metrics and dashboards to monitor close progress, track timing, and flag exceptions in real time.

Results

• Faster Close: The month-end close cycle time was reduced by over 40%, allowing earlier financial reporting.
• Improved Accuracy: Automated reconciliations minimized human error and ensured cleaner financial data.
• Enhanced Accountability: Clearly defined roles and standardized procedures eliminated last-minute confusion.
• Increased Efficiency: Manual hours spent on closing activities decreased significantly, allowing more focus on financial analysis.
• Better Decision Support: Timelier reporting enabled leadership to make more proactive business decisions.

Conclusion

Through clear process mapping, standardization, and automation, S.K.I.L.L. Consultants transformed a complex, manual month-end close into a streamlined, efficient, and transparent process. The result is a finance function that spends less time chasing numbers and more time understanding them—empowering smarter, data-driven decision-making across the organization.