Small-Business Books · session 5 of 6 · 25 min

A Month-End Habit

Run a thirty-minute month-end close: match, sort, total, decide.
Catch missing lines while the month is fresh enough to remember.

Once a month, the books get thirty minutes: match every ledger line against the bank statement, sort expenses into their categories, total what came in and went out, and decide one thing to do differently next month. Match, sort, total, decide. Coffee optional but traditional.

The schedule is the feature. A missing line from last Tuesday takes one minute to fix — you remember Tuesday. The same line found in April takes an hour of archaeology, if it is found at all. Monthly is the longest gap where memory still works.

At month-end your ledger says Ⓛ1,240.00 and the bank says Ⓛ1,180.00. What does the Ⓛ60.00 gap mean?

Pick your answer first, then open it.

The ledger is missing an expense — something spent Ⓛ60.00 that never got written down

✓ Most likely, yes: the bank saw a payment the ledger never got. Scan the statement for the Ⓛ60.00 line, add it, and the two match again. The gap is the system working — it just caught the miss.

The bank made an error — banks lose money all the time

Bank errors exist, but they are rare and yours to prove. The overwhelmingly common cause is a line that never made the ledger — check your own record first, then dispute if the statement really shows something false.

Nothing — Ⓛ60.00 is close enough for a small business

Close enough is how books rot. Today's tolerated Ⓛ60.00 becomes next quarter's unexplainable Ⓛ400.00, and a ledger that is only mostly true cannot answer questions with authority.

This week

Put the first month-end on the calendar now — a real date, thirty minutes. The habit starts as an appointment.

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