# Month-End Close & Reconciliation: done-for-you AI automation by BufferSol

> A done-for-you month-end close automation is a set of AI agents that BufferSol builds around your general ledger. They reconcile bank, credit card, payment processor, intercompany and subledger accounts every night, explain each unmatched item, draft recurring and accrual journal entries for review, and keep the close checklist current. Your accountants review and post. Most matching is finished before the month ends, so the team spends close week on judgment calls instead of tick and tie.

- Canonical: https://buffersoltech.com/done-for-you/finance/month-end-reconciliation
- Category: Finance & Accounting
- Provider: BufferSol Technologies (New York; serving the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and the EU)
- Timeline: live in 3 to 6 weeks
- Pricing: quoted after a short scoping call

## Accounts reconciled every night, so close week is review instead of rework

**Who it is for:** Controllers and accounting teams at companies with several bank accounts, entities or payment processors who close in NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, Xero or Dynamics with spreadsheets filling the gaps.

### Signs you need it
- Close takes well over a week, and the first days go on matching transactions.
- Reconciliations live in Excel workbooks that only their author fully understands.
- Books get reopened after close to fix something found late.
- Stripe, Shopify or PayPal payouts never tie to the bank without a manual bridge.
- Intercompany balances are trued up once a quarter after a long email chain.

## Business outcomes
- **Close starts nearly reconciled.** By the last day of the month, most bank and card lines are already matched, and the open items each carry an explanation and an owner.
- **Fewer late adjustments.** Unusual balances and missing accruals are flagged during the month, so fewer surprises turn up after the numbers have gone to leadership.
- **Evidence ready for audit.** Every reconciliation carries its support, preparer, reviewer and timestamps, so audit requests take a download instead of a week of digging.

## How it works today
1. On day one, staff accountants download bank and card statements and export GL detail into Excel.
2. They match lines with lookups and filters and highlight whatever does not tie.
3. They email colleagues to explain unknown items and wait for answers.
4. They maintain accrual and prepaid schedules in separate workbooks and key the journal entries by hand.
5. The controller reviews tie-outs, sends back questions, and tracks status on a checklist spreadsheet.
6. Items found late trigger post-close adjustments, and sometimes the period has to be reopened.

Hidden costs:
- Close-week overtime that wears the team down and drives people to leave.
- Leaders wait for numbers and make decisions on last month's estimates.
- Errors slip through when tired people tick and tie under deadline, then surface during the audit.

## How it works done for you
1. Each night the agents pull bank, card and processor data along with GL and subledger detail from your ERP.
2. They match transactions using your rules plus fuzzy matching on amount, date and reference, including one-to-many cases such as processor payouts net of fees and refunds.
3. Each unmatched item gets a short explanation and a likely cause, and questions go to the account owner in Slack or Teams with the transaction attached.
4. Recurring entries, accruals and prepaid amortization are drafted as journal entries with support attached, waiting for an accountant to review and post.
5. A flux review compares balances with the prior period and budget and drafts commentary for every movement above your threshold.
6. The close checklist updates as reconciliations are signed off, so the controller sees open tasks by owner and day.
7. Preparer, reviewer, timestamps and support are stored with each reconciliation and locked once the period closes.

## What changes for the team
- **Staff accountant.** Today: Spends the first days of close matching statement lines in spreadsheets. Done for you: Reviews proposed matches, investigates real breaks and owns the accounts that need judgment.
- **Senior accountant.** Today: Rebuilds accrual and prepaid schedules each month and keys the entries. Done for you: Reviews drafted entries with support attached and refines the rules behind them.
- **Controller.** Today: Chases status across a checklist spreadsheet and reviews tie-outs late at night. Done for you: Watches a live close tracker, signs off reconciliations and spends time on analysis for leadership.

## KPIs we measure
- **Days to close:** Business days from period end to final trial balance, baselined from the last six closes.
- **Reconciliations complete on day one:** Count of balance sheet accounts reconciled and reviewed by the first business day after month end.
- **Post-close adjustments:** Number and value of entries booked after close, tracked each period.
- **Aged unreconciled items:** Open reconciling items by age and account, reported weekly.
- **Close-week overtime:** Hours logged by the accounting team during close compared with the baseline months.

## Industry data
- 6.4 calendar days: median time to close a month's books; top performers take 4.8 days or less (APQC benchmark) ([CFO.com (APQC data)](https://www.cfo.com/news/metric-of-the-month-cycle-time-for-monthly-close/))
- 59%: of accountants make several financial errors per month (Gartner survey, July 2023) ([Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-02-21-gartner-survey-shows-that-a-third-of-accountants-make-several-error-per-weeo-due-to-capacity-constraints))
- 85%: of participants had to re-open the books in at least one month during the last year to fix errors (2022) ([FloQast](https://floqast.com/press/floqast-releases-survey-results-detailing-prevalent-burnout-in-accounting-industry/))

## Systems it connects to
NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, Xero, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Stripe, Shopify Payments, Bank feeds via Plaid or direct files, Excel and Google Sheets, FloQast or BlackLine

## Guardrails
- Agents draft; accountants post. No journal entry reaches the ledger without a named reviewer.
- Matching rules and materiality thresholds are set by the controller and every change is versioned.
- Bank and card connections are read-only.
- Closed periods are locked to the agents, and every reconciliation keeps its preparer, reviewer, timestamps and support.

## What teams say about this work
- In a survey of accounting and finance professionals, most said the close had disrupted their personal life in at least one month of the past year, and most had reopened the books to fix errors. ([FloQast](https://floqast.com/press/floqast-releases-survey-results-detailing-prevalent-burnout-in-accounting-industry/))
- Accounting staff link close-period stress to turnover on their teams, and only a minority feel very confident that their last close was error free. ([Accounting Today](https://accountingtoday.com/news/month-end-close-process-viewed-as-stressful))
- Controllership staff tie frequent financial errors to capacity limits, with workloads growing from new regulations and economic volatility. ([Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-02-21-gartner-survey-shows-that-a-third-of-accountants-make-several-error-per-weeo-due-to-capacity-constraints))
- Reviewers of dedicated close software describe heavy setup and user training before reconciliations are automated, and some report painful implementations. ([Capterra](https://capterra.com/p/114268/Finance-Controls-Automation/reviews/))

## Delivery: live in 3 to 6 weeks
1. Week 1: discovery, access and a baseline of today's numbers.
2. Weeks 2–3: build the agents and connect your systems, with your rules and approvals.
3. Weeks 3–5: test on your real history, then pilot on live work with your team reviewing.
4. Weeks 4–6: staged go-live, training, dashboards and handover.

## Executive Ask questions for this workflow
- Which accounts are still unreconciled for last month, and who owns them?
- What were the largest post-close adjustments this quarter, and what caused them?
- Why did operating expenses move so much against budget last month?

## Frequently asked questions
### How long does it take to go live?
A close automation is usually live in 3 to 6 weeks. We start with the accounts that eat the most time, typically bank, card and payment processor reconciliations, and run them side by side with your current workbooks for one close. Once the results match and your controller signs off, we add accruals, prepaid schedules, intercompany and flux commentary in order of value.

### How is it priced?
Pricing is quoted after a short scoping call. The main factors are the number of entities, bank and card accounts, payment processors and ERPs, and whether you want journal drafting and flux commentary as well as reconciliation. You get a fixed written quote covering design, build, connections, deployment and configuration, so there are no surprises during the project.

### Do we still need FloQast or BlackLine?
Not necessarily. If you already use a close tool, the agents feed it: they prepare matches, explanations and support, and your team signs off in the tool you know. If you close from spreadsheets today, we can keep the checklist and reconciliation records in your ERP, Google Sheets or a simple tracker, so you avoid a heavy software rollout.

### Can the agents post journal entries?
They draft them, with the calculation and support attached, and stop there. An accountant reviews each entry and posts it, or approves a batch of recurring entries in one step. You can choose to let low-risk recurring entries post after approval rules you define, but nothing reaches the ledger without a named reviewer, and closed periods stay locked.

### What do our auditors see?
Each reconciliation keeps the source data, the matching logic used, the explanation for every open item, the preparer, the reviewer and the timestamps. Your auditors can be given read-only access or an export per period. Because the same rules run every month, it is easier to show that controls operated consistently, which usually shortens the back-and-forth during fieldwork.