Month-End Close Orchestration

Turn the month-end close checklist into dependent board tasks, chase down owners until each one is done, and send a daily status report until the close is complete.

When to use

• A new accounting period has ended and the close checklist needs to run as tracked, dependent tasks instead of a scattered list.
• Task owners are slow to respond and someone needs to nudge them and escalate blockers.
• Stakeholders want a daily rollup of close progress instead of asking around.
• A close step turns out to require a payment, refund, or journal entry that must not fire on its own.

Tools

• create-task
• delegate-task
• check-task
• list-tasks
• schedule-task
• send-message

Playbook

1. Load the close checklist for the period (bank reconciliations, accrual entries, intercompany eliminations, AP/AR cutoff, fixed-asset depreciation, tax accruals, financial statement review). For each line item, create-task with a clear title, due date, and any dependency on a prior step (e.g. "Reconcile bank accounts" must complete before "Post accrual entries").
2. delegate-task each created task to its designated owner (controller, AP lead, AR lead, FP&A) based on the ownership mapping for that checklist item.
3. schedule-task a recurring daily check-in during the close window (e.g. every business day at 9am until close sign-off) that runs steps 4-6.
4. On each run, list-tasks filtered to the current close period to see what is open, in-progress, blocked, or overdue.
5. For any task past its due date or stalled, send-message to the owner with a specific nudge (task name, what's blocking it, new deadline). Escalate to the controller via send-message if a task has been overdue more than one check-in cycle.
6. check-task on any task marked complete to confirm it actually has the expected output (e.g. a reconciliation file, an approved journal entry reference) attached before treating it as done — do not just trust the status flag.
7. If a checklist item requires executing a payment, refund, or posting a journal entry, do not perform it. Instead create-task titled "APPROVAL: " describing exactly what needs to be authorized, and delegate-task it to a human approver. Only proceed once that approval task is marked complete by the human.
8. Once all checklist tasks are complete and all APPROVAL tasks are resolved, send-message a close-complete summary to the finance lead, then cancel the recurring daily check-in.

Failure modes

• A checklist task is marked complete but has no attached evidence (recon file, entry reference) — always verify with check-task before trusting it, and reopen with a message to the owner if evidence is missing.
• Dependency ordering is ignored and a downstream task (e.g. accruals) gets delegated before its prerequisite (e.g. bank reconciliation) is done — recreate the dependency link and pause the downstream task.
• An owner goes silent past escalation — stop nudging on a fixed loop and instead send-message a named escalation to the controller with the specific overdue task and how many cycles it's been stalled.
• A checklist item is misread as "just document it" when it actually requires moving money or posting an entry — when in doubt, route it through an APPROVAL task rather than assuming it's safe to mark done directly.

Done when

• Every checklist task for the period shows complete in list-tasks, each with verified evidence via check-task.
• Every APPROVAL task created during the close has been resolved by a human, with no payment, refund, or journal entry executed autonomously.
• The finance lead has received the close-complete summary and the recurring daily check-in has been stopped.