Month end prep

Month End Prep

Quick start

Connect your bookkeeping ledger and at least one payment processor, then say "let's close the month." Claude walks you through each step of the checklist, pausing for your input at each gate before moving forward.

Any connected ledger runs the close. Each has a reference file for its reads and its "needs attention" signal: reference/quickbooks-reconcile.md, reference/xero-reconcile.md, reference/zoho-books-reconcile.md; NetSuite and MYOB are in reference/v2_sources.md. Ledgers are peers (../../shared/connector-neutrality.md): if two are connected, ask which holds the books being closed, read the other only for what it uniquely holds, and never sum a figure across both.

Every amount is in the business's currency (../../shared/currency-and-locale.md). The thresholds below (0.50, 0.01, 25) are in that currency.

If a connector is missing, Claude falls back to asking for a CSV export — it won't silently skip a step.

Workflow

Work through these steps in order. Each step has a completion state; don't advance until the current step is settled.

Step 1 — Agree on the target month

Ask the user which month to close. Default to the prior calendar month if they don't specify. Confirm before pulling any data.

Step 2 — Pull the ledger's P&L and register

Fetch:

• Profit & Loss report for the target month (revenue, COGS, gross margin, operating expenses, net income)
• The register, as the ledger's reference file defines it. QuickBooks: the transaction list, every income and expense line. Xero: bills, invoices, and the bank-transaction queue, with that scope stated in the packet. Zoho Books: invoices, expenses, and purchase orders, with the P&L itself coming from an export because the connector has no report endpoint.

Flag immediately, using the ledger's own "needs attention" signal:

• QuickBooks — uncategorized lines ("Uncategorized," blank, "Ask My Accountant") and its Needs Review flag
• Xero — bank lines still unreconciled at month end
• Zoho Books — the uncategorized_transactions count on each bank account

Present the count ("14 transactions need attention") and list them for the user to resolve in the ledger before proceeding. Don't advance with open items unless the user explicitly says "skip for now."

See reference/quickbooks-reconcile.md, reference/xero-reconcile.md, and reference/zoho-books-reconcile.md for field mappings and API notes.

Step 3 — Pull payment processor settlements

Fetch settlement reports from PayPal, Square, Stripe, or Shopify — whichever are connected — for the same calendar month.

Check the bank feed first. When a processor pays out through a bank feed, the payout is already a ledger line and the question is whether it has been matched. Find unreconciled bank lines naming a processor and list them per processor as the action items before doing any CSV match. This applies to any ledger that carries a bank feed with a reconciled state — the usual case in Xero, and QuickBooks bank-feed lines when the connector exposes them. MYOB holds no bank side, and Zoho Books exposes balances but no bank-transaction list, so a MYOB or Zoho Books close goes straight to the CSV match below.

Compare net to net, or every line looks broken. The ledger records the net bank deposit; the processor's report shows the gross sale. Match those directly and every row shows a discrepancy the exact size of the fee. Use the processor's net payout (gross minus fees) — see reference/gotchas.md.

Match each settlement deposit against the ledger's bank deposit line:

• Match — amount and date agree within 2 days → mark as reconciled
• Difference < 0.50 — rounding/fee; note but don't flag
• Difference ≥ 0.50 — flag with the delta amount
• Settlement exists, no ledger deposit — flag as "missing in the ledger"
• Ledger deposit exists, no settlement — flag as "deposit not in processor data"

See reference/paypal-settlements.md for settlement report field mappings (PayPal, Square, Stripe) and reference/v2_sources.md for Shopify.

Step 4 — Detect suspicious duplicates

Scan the register for likely duplicate charges or deposits. Flag a transaction as a suspicious duplicate when all three match:

• Same amount (within 0.01)
• Same vendor or customer name
• Posted within 5 calendar days of each other

Scan what the ledger actually holds. In QuickBooks that is the transaction list, with split rows grouped by transaction id first. In Xero a bill keyed twice makes two unpaid documents and no bank line, so scan bills and invoices (same contact, same total, within 5 days, both unpaid or one paid inside the window) rather than bank lines — the mapping is in reference/xero-reconcile.md. Zoho Books is the same shape: scan invoices and expenses as documents (reference/zoho-books-reconcile.md).

Present flagged pairs to the user. They decide whether each is legitimate (e.g., a recurring weekly subscription) or a real duplicate to void.

The 5-day window is a filter, not a guarantee. It catches the same charge keyed twice without drowning the owner in recurring weekly bills, but a real double payment three weeks apart slips through. Say what was scanned ("repeats within 5 days"), and widen the window for a vendor they're suspicious about rather than calling it clean.

See reference/gotchas.md for common false-positive patterns and how to distinguish them.

Step 5 — Receipts check

Check the ledger first: an attachment on the transaction counts as a receipt on file (AttachmentCount in QuickBooks; has_attachments in Xero, returned only with include_line_items=true; has_attachment on Zoho Books invoices and expenses). Then, if the Desktop connector is available, scan the receipts folder (ask the user for the path; default ~/Documents/Receipts) for the target month.

For each expense transaction above 25 with no attached document:

• Check for a matching receipt file (match by amount ± 0.50 and date within 3 days)
• Matched → note as "receipt on file"
• Not matched → flag as "missing receipt"

List missing receipts. The user can supply the file or mark as "receipt not required" (e.g., a recurring auto-pay with no receipt).

If Desktop connector is not available, ask the user to confirm which expenses they have receipts for — don't silently skip this step.

Step 5a — Payroll cross-check

Runs only when a payroll connector is connected (Gusto or QuickBooks Payroll — peers, whichever is connected). Otherwise skip it and say the packet carries no payroll column.

Pull what was actually paid in the month, totals only:

• Gusto — list_payrolls with include=totals, keeping the payrolls whose check_date falls in the target month. From each totals: gross_pay, employer_taxes, employee_taxes, net_pay. Then list_contractor_payments for the same date range with group_by_date=true, taking total.wages and total.reimbursements. Contractor totals cover US contractors only — say so in the packet footnote.
• QuickBooks Payroll — qbo_payroll_get_company_last_payroll_run for the most recent run; earlier runs in the month come from the payroll summary export. (Confirm before the first close.)

Cross-check against the ledger: net pay plus employer taxes plus contractor wages should appear as the month's payroll expense lines. A difference above 0.50 is a reconciliation item — usually a run posted to the wrong month, or a payroll journal not yet posted.

Totals only, never people. The packet carries the month's totals and the count of runs. No employee name, rate, or per-person amount leaves the connector — that is payroll data, and payroll-prep is where it belongs. See reference/v2_sources.md for the field mapping.

Step 6 — Owner sign-off gate

Present a summary before going further:

Needs attention (uncategorized or unreconciled):  X of X resolved
Settlement discrepancies:                        X flagged, X resolved
Suspicious duplicates:                           X flagged, X cleared
Missing receipts:                                X outstanding
Payroll cross-check:                             matched / X difference / no payroll connector

Ask: "Ready to write the P&L summary and export the close packet?"

Do not proceed to Steps 7–8 without explicit confirmation.

Step 7 — Write the P&L narrative

Write a plain-English summary of the month — the kind an owner would share with their spouse or accountant, not a CFO memo. Aim for 150–250 words.

Structure:

1. Headline — one sentence: "March came in at AUD 12,400 net, up 6% from February." Currency code, never a bare symbol.
2. Revenue — what drove the number; name products, services, or customers if the data shows concentration.
3. Gross margin — whether it held, rose, or compressed, and the main reason why.
4. Key expenses — any line that moved more than 10% MoM or is outside the normal range; one sentence each.
5. Bottom line — net income vs. prior month; ask if they have a target to compare.
6. Watch list — 1–3 things to monitor next month.

Avoid jargon; define anything that isn't plain English ("MoM" = month over month).

See reference/examples/pl-narrative.md for a worked example.

Step 8 — Export the close packet

Produce two files:

close-packet-[YYYY-MM].xlsx — three sheets, four when a payroll connector is connected:

• P&L — the ledger's P&L data, formatted
• Reconciliation — matched and flagged transactions side by side
• Action Items — any outstanding flags (uncategorized, missing receipts, etc.)
• Payroll — the Step 5a totals beside the ledger's payroll expense, with the delta

close-packet-[YYYY-MM]-summary.pdf — one page:

• Month and business name at the top
• Key figures (revenue, gross margin %, net income)
• The P&L narrative from Step 7
• Count of open action items, if any

Save both to the Desktop (or a path the user specifies). Confirm the file locations.

See reference/close-packet-format.md for column specs and PDF layout details.

Also deliver the close as a page, per the owner's stored output preference — never default to a markdown file. Check the ## Business context block's Output preference (shared style guide rule, ../../shared/artifact-style.md):

• Visual artifact (the default): render the close as an HTML page in the house style — additive to the chat summary and the files, never a replacement. Revenue, gross margin percent, and net income are stat tiles with their month-over-month change as context lines; the reconciliation results are a table with tabular-nums amounts; each flag carries a status pill — good for reconciled, warn for missing receipts and uncategorized items, critical for unresolved settlement gaps and duplicates; the P&L narrative and the open-items checklist each get a panel.
• docx / md / notion / canva preference: deliver the same content in that form — a DOCX or markdown file, a Notion page created via the connector (named destination, never overwriting), or a Canva Doc created via the Canva connector (a new design each run, named with the date; tables become lists); fall back to the visual artifact if Notion or Canva is not connected — and say that is why. The packet xlsx and PDF keep their formats.
• Best for skill: use the visual artifact — the close is reviewed on screen before the packet goes to the accountant.

Step 9 — After the close

Say in one line what closed and what is still open. Then offer the single most relevant next step, plus at most two others nearby:

• "Cash forecast" runs cash-flow-snapshot off the freshly closed numbers.
• "Build me a report" runs report-builder to publish and distribute the packet.
• "Taxes" runs /tax-prep when quarter or year end is near — offered only when the business context says Country is US, since that chain's tax math is US federal.

Max three offers. Never repeat an offer the owner declined this session.

Approval gates

• Never run reconciliation on a month that has been filed. Confirm the books are still open before pulling data.
• Never void or modify a ledger transaction directly. Surface flags; the owner makes changes in the ledger.
• Always pause at Step 6 before producing outputs. Unresolved flags must be acknowledged or explicitly skipped.
• Never reproduce per-person pay, SSNs, or bank numbers in the close package beyond the journal totals (../../shared/personal-data.md).

Graceful degradation

Missing connector	Fallback
QuickBooks	Ask for two separate exports — the Profit & Loss report, and the Transaction Detail by Account report. One file will not carry both; asking for "a QB export" gets you one of them and a second round trip
Xero	Ask for two exports — the Profit and Loss report, and the Account Transactions report with all accounts selected — plus the unreconciled line count from the bank reconciliation screen, which no export carries
NetSuite or MYOB	Ask for the P&L and the transaction detail for the month as two exports; MYOB holds no bank balances, so the bank side comes from a statement
Zoho Books	Even when connected, ask for the Profit and Loss export (no report endpoint) and a bank statement (no bank-transaction feed); the register and the uncategorised count come from the connector. Not connected: add the Account Transactions export
Payment processor	Ask for a settlement CSV from the processor's website. It must include the fee column, not just the gross amount, or the net-to-net match in Step 3 can't be done
Payment processor connected but returns zero payouts for the period	Treat as a data gap, not a clean zero. Say the connector returned nothing for the month, ask for the same settlement CSV (fee column included), and name the gap in the report rather than reconciling against an empty set
Payroll connector (Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll)	Skip Step 5a. The packet has no Payroll sheet and the summary says "no payroll connector"; the ledger's payroll expense lines still appear in the P&L unchecked
Desktop (receipts)	Ask the user to confirm receipt status for each flagged expense

More sources

Read reference/v2_sources.md for the mapping:

• Shopify — settlement reconciliation as a first-class leg. Orders, payouts, and fees each land differently, and it's a common source of unexplained gaps
• NetSuite — a ledger of record, common at the larger end of the segment; reports and SuiteQL supply the P&L and register
• Xero — a ledger of record with its own register shape (bills, invoices, bank queue) and its own attention signal (unreconciled bank lines); mapped in reference/xero-reconcile.md
• MYOB — P&L and AR/AP balances; no bank balances, so the bank side of the close comes from a statement
• Zoho Books — a ledger of record with a document register (invoices, expenses, purchase orders), bank balances with an uncategorised count as the attention signal, and no report or bank-feed endpoints, so the P&L and the payout match come from exports; mapped in reference/zoho-books-reconcile.md
• Ramp, Expensify — card and expense detail, which closes the gap between what was spent and what was coded
• Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll — payroll actually run: gross pay, employer taxes, net pay, and contractor payments as month totals, so Step 5a reconciles the ledger's payroll expense against what was paid rather than what was planned. Totals only; no per-person data enters the packet

Same close sequence, same packet. More sources reconciled.

QuickBooks summary fields lie. Read ../../shared/quickbooks-report-traps.md before quoting any total from a QuickBooks summary object: the AP aging summary nets vendor credits into its buckets and can show a negative overdue figure, and the P&L summary can report expenses as zero against real rows. Total the rows, or use the detail call.

Reference files

• reference/quickbooks-reconcile.md — QB field mappings, API pagination, common data issues
• reference/xero-reconcile.md — Xero register definition, unreconciled-line signal, document-level duplicate scan, attachments
• reference/zoho-books-reconcile.md — Zoho Books register definition, uncategorised-count signal, what needs an export
• reference/paypal-settlements.md — settlement report structure for PayPal, Square, and Stripe
• reference/close-packet-format.md — xlsx column specs, PDF layout, file naming convention
• reference/gotchas.md — duplicate false positives, split transactions, partial-month edge cases
• reference/examples/pl-narrative.md — worked P&L narrative example

Using a tool that isn't listed

The connectors named in this skill are the tested paths, not a wall. If the owner wants this flow to use a tool that isn't connected or listed, offer build-connector — it checks the connector directory first and connects through Zapier otherwise, never hand-building against a raw API. Once the connection exists, the tool joins this skill like any other optional connector, under the same approval gates.