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.
Concentrates marketing and sales effort on a named set of accounts rather than on volume — qualifying whether the model fits your economics at all, building the account list and the buying group inside each, tiering effort against account value, coordinating so the account experiences one campaign rather than several, and measuring account progression instead of leads. Use this to decide whether to run an account-based program, build one, or work out why an existing one produces activity and no pipeline.
Designs orchestrator-and-subagent hierarchies for a repository — splitting agents by exclusive write surface, pairing every producer with an independent auditor, and enforcing the split with a script that runs in CI. Use this whenever the user wants to set up, expand, audit, or fix a multi-agent or subagent structure for a codebase; asks how to divide work between agents; wants agent charters, roles, or a surface map written; or is hitting agents that collide on the same files, review their own work, or drift from their remit. Also use when sizing a roster or deciding whether a new agent is justified.
Governs models and AI systems in production — intended use, evaluation, monitoring, human oversight, documentation, and the decision to deploy or retire. Use this before deploying a model or AI feature, when defining evaluation criteria, when a model's behavior has drifted, when assessing AI risk or regulatory exposure, or when deciding whether an AI system is fit for a consequential decision.
Produces executive-level research — market sizing, competitor mapping, trend analysis, and strategic intelligence — grounded in cited sources with the confidence in each claim made explicit. Use this to analyze a market or industry, map competitors, evaluate a market-entry or build-versus-buy decision, produce a research brief, or assemble evidence for a decision. Also use when comparing options that need a structured, evidence-based verdict rather than an opinion.
Optimizes for AI assistants and AI-generated answers — being retrievable, being cited, and being represented accurately when a model answers on your behalf. Use this when traffic is shifting from links to AI answers, when a brand is misrepresented or absent in AI responses, when planning content for retrieval rather than ranking, or when deciding how AI search changes an existing SEO program.
Improves visibility and conversion in the App Store and Google Play — metadata, keywords, screenshots, ratings, and the listing experience that turns an impression into an install. Use this to audit or optimize an app listing, plan a launch listing, diagnose poor install conversion, or improve store search visibility.
Protects and restores data — backup coverage and scope, retention, immutability against ransomware, and proving restores actually work. Use this to design a backup regime, verify restores, plan retention, protect backups from ransomware, or recover from data loss.
Runs the planning cycle — annual budget, rolling forecast, consolidation of business unit inputs, and the variance analysis that explains actuals against plan. Use this to build or challenge a budget, run a forecast cycle, consolidate departmental submissions, explain why results diverged from plan, or improve forecast accuracy.