financial-reporting-and-close
Runs the period-end close and produces reporting — close calendar, reconciliations, accruals, variance analysis, and reporting that gets read. Use this to shorten or stabilize a monthly close, design a close checklist, investigate a variance, structure management reporting, or work out why the numbers keep changing after close.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cbrock84/headcount /tmp/financial-reporting-and-close && cp -r /tmp/financial-reporting-and-close/plugins/finance/skills/financial-reporting-and-close ~/.claude/skills/financial-reporting-and-closeSKILL.md
# Financial reporting and close A close is a manufacturing process whose output is a number people will make decisions on. Treat it as a process — sequence, dependencies, quality control — and it gets faster and more accurate together, which sounds contradictory only if you think speed comes from cutting checks. ## Design the close as a critical path Map every task with its owner, its dependencies and its duration. Most closes are slow because independent work is running in series out of habit, not because any step is long. Move work out of the close window wherever it does not depend on period-end: reconcile subledgers continuously, book recurring accruals from a schedule, prepare consolidation structure in advance. Anything you can do on day minus three is a day you are not doing on day two. Set a **hard cutoff** and hold it. A close that stays open for late entries never finishes and teaches everyone that deadlines are advisory. ## Reconciliations are the control Every balance sheet account gets an owner and a reconciliation. The reconciliation is not the schedule — it is the explanation of the difference and what will clear it. Watch aged reconciling items specifically. An unexplained item that has survived three closes is not a timing difference; it is an error that has been carried forward by people assuming someone else understood it. ## Accruals and the honesty of estimates Accrue on the best available evidence and document the basis. The basis matters more than the number, because next period someone has to decide whether it still holds. Track how estimates resolve against actuals. Consistent bias in one direction is information about the estimator or the process, and it is invisible unless someone looks. ## Reporting that gets read Explain variance against a stated expectation — budget, prior period, or forecast — and say which. A variance without a baseline is a number. Lead with the two or three things that changed and why, then supporting detail. A report that requires the reader to find the story does not get read, and its absence of readership is discovered during a crisis. Separate **timing** from **run-rate**. A miss caused by something slipping a week is a different business fact from a miss caused by demand falling, and conflating them produces the wrong reaction. ## Tooling Ledger, by scale: QuickBooks, Xero, or FreshBooks for a single entity; NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or Dynamics 365 Business Central once you consolidate multiple entities; SAP S/4HANA or Oracle Fusion at the top end, and similar. Close management — BlackLine, FloQast, Numeric, and similar — sits on the ledger and tracks the checklist, the reconciliations, and the sign-offs. It buys you an audit trail, not discipline. A shared checklist does the same job until the trail is what you lack. ## Never - Leave the ledger open for late entries after the stated cutoff. - Carry an unexplained reconciling item forward a second time. - Present a variance without saying what it is a variance from. - Report a number you cannot trace to a reconciliation.
Corporate Strategy (CSO). Owns plugins/corporate-strategy/** and nothing else. Delegate work in this department's remit here.
Customer Experience (CCO). Owns plugins/customer-experience/** and nothing else. Delegate work in this department's remit here.
Data & Analytics (CDO). Owns plugins/data-analytics/** and nothing else. Delegate work in this department's remit here.
Demand Generation (CMO). Owns plugins/demand-generation/** and nothing else. Delegate work in this department's remit here.
Office of the CEO. Owns plugins/executive/** and nothing else. Delegate work in this department's remit here.
Finance (CFO). Owns plugins/finance/** and nothing else. Delegate work in this department's remit here.
Corporate IT. Owns plugins/it-operations/** and nothing else. Delegate service desk, systems and network administration, virtualization and cloud, telephony and conferencing, endpoints, assets, identity lifecycle, and backup work here.
Reviewer-class. Read-only review of what other departments commit to — contract terms, privacy and data handling, risk acceptance, and compliance findings. Holds no write surface. Its findings are not overrulable by the department under review.