How to run a month-end close

This is a process article – not necessarily about how to do things in the Operating UI, but more about the organizational habits you want to pick up and keep improving as you grow.

At the end of each month, someone in your organization needs to make sure that all tracked time is correct, revenue is recognized, and invoices are sent. This guide covers the full month-end close process in Operating — from verifying timesheets through to confirming all invoices are out the door.

The exact steps and who does them will vary by organization. In smaller firms, one person handles the whole cycle. In larger ones, consulting managers approve timesheets, project owners review financials, and a finance team handles invoicing. The steps below follow the logical order regardless of who performs them.

Step 1: Chase missing time entries

Before you can close a month, everyone needs to have tracked their time.

Go to the Timesheets view and filter to the month you're closing. Look for:

• People with incomplete weeks. Compare tracked hours against expected working hours. People who are fully allocated but show significantly fewer hours may have forgotten to track.

• People with zero entries. Anyone who was employed and allocated during the month but has no time entries at all.

Send reminders to anyone with gaps. The sooner you do this after month-end, the more accurate people's recollections will be — waiting two weeks makes it much harder for consultants to reconstruct what they worked on.

Step 2: Approve timesheets

If your organization uses approval flows, time entries need to be approved before they should be invoiced.

Consulting managers (or whoever is configured as the approver) should review and approve submitted time entries for the closing month. When reviewing, check:

• Hours match allocations reasonably. Significant deviations — someone allocated at 100% but tracking only 50% — may indicate a problem worth investigating before approving.

• Time is tracked to the correct project and task. Entries on the wrong project affect both that project's financials and the intended project's financials.

• Non-billable time is correctly categorized. Time mistakenly marked as non-billable on a billable project means lost revenue. Time incorrectly marked as billable creates invoice disputes.

Re-open entries that need correction and communicate what needs to change. Once corrected and resubmitted, approve them.

The goal is to have all time entries for the month approved before proceeding to invoicing.

Step 3: Review expenses

Check that all billable expenses for the month have been recorded against the correct projects. Expenses that are missing at invoice time either delay the invoice or get forgotten entirely.

For each active billable project, verify:

• Any known expenses (travel, software, materials) have been entered

• Expenses are marked as billable or non-billable correctly

• Receipts are attached where required by your expense categories

Step 4: Update budget progress on fixed-price projects

If any of your fixed-price projects use the "Based on time planned or tracked, weighed by hourly rates" revenue recognition method, this is the time to update the progress percentage.

For each such project, the project owner should assess how much of the current budget period's work has been completed and set the progress accordingly in the project's financial setup. This directly determines how much earned revenue is recognized for the month.

Projects using "Evenly by month / week" don't require this step — their earned revenue is calculated automatically, evenly over the budget duration.

For more detail on how each method works, see How revenue recognition works for fixed-price projects.

Step 5: Review project financials

Before creating invoices, review the financial status of each active billable project. Open the project detail page and check the Status section:

• Earned revenue — does it look reasonable given the work done this month?

• Planned vs. actuals — are tracked hours and revenue broadly in line with what was planned? Large variances may indicate data issues (wrong rates, missing entries) rather than actual project problems.

• Gross profit and margin — are they within expected ranges? A sudden margin drop could signal a cost rate issue or time tracked by the wrong person.

This review is your last chance to catch data problems before they become invoice problems. It's much easier to fix a time entry now than to issue a credit note later.

Step 6: Create and review invoices

For each billable project that has un-invoiced work from the closing month, create an invoice. See How to create and send an invoice for the detailed steps.

Work through your projects systematically. A useful approach:

1. Start with time-and-materials projects — these are straightforward since the invoice amount comes directly from tracked hours and rates.

2. Then handle fixed-price projects — check that invoicing schedules align with the month you're closing and that the amounts match your agreements.

3. Finally, handle multi-project clients — if a client has several active projects, decide whether to send consolidated or per-project invoices.

For each invoice, review the line items carefully before finalizing. Once you save the invoice, the included time entries are marked as invoiced and won't appear in future billing cycles.

Step 7: Send invoices

Send all finalized invoices — either directly from Operating or by downloading PDFs and sending through your usual channel.

Step 8: Confirm completion

After all invoices are sent, take a final look at the overall picture:

• Check the invoicing section on each project to confirm all expected invoices are in "Sent" status.

• Compare earned revenue to invoiced revenue across your active projects. They don't need to match exactly (price adjustments on invoices are normal), but large gaps may indicate a project was missed.

• Check for projects with tracked time but no invoice. These might be non-billable projects (which is fine) or billable projects that were accidentally skipped.

When everything checks out, the month is closed. The numbers in Operating's reports for that month are now final and can be trusted for management reporting.

Building a repeatable routine

Month-end close works best as a documented checklist with clear owners and deadlines. Here's a typical timeline:

The exact dates depend on your organization's size and payment terms. Firms with 14-day payment terms may want invoices out by the 5th; those with 30-day terms have more flexibility.

The key is consistency. A predictable routine means fewer missed invoices, fewer corrections, and reliable financial data month after month.

Related articles

• How to create and send an invoice — detailed invoicing steps

• Understanding planned vs. actuals — interpreting the financial data you're reviewing

• How revenue recognition works for fixed-price projects — when and why to update budget progress

• Approval flows — configuring timesheet approvals

• How to start using Operating for time tracking — time entry basics