From the feed to a month you trust
.A month starts open. It becomes a month you trust when the bank, the card batches, and the bills tell the same story.
We begin with the feed. Every deposit needs a home. Every withdrawal needs a name. A deposit or a withdrawal we cannot name stays on a short question list. We refuse to jam it into a category just so the month looks tidy.
Reconciliations are that list getting shorter. When the list is empty and the balance agrees, the month can be closed.
Statements come after that agreement. They describe the closed month. They do not repair it.
What usually holds a month open
.A deposit with no invoice, a card batch that posted in the next month, and a bill that was entered twice are the ordinary reasons a month stays open.
Payroll belongs in the same month the provider ran it. If the provider and the bank disagree, we stop and ask which date is real.
We do not smooth an open month so the return can start. Smoothing is how a later month inherits a lie.
You still decide the draws, the owner items, and the vendors we cannot see from the feed alone.
The trail beside downtown
.A vendor can be paid in a quiet week or a busy one. We still want the month a vendor was paid to be the month the bank shows, not the month a morning downtown was busy. The payment date is the record. A crowd on a path does not rewrite the month the bank already shows.
A busy week is not a closed week. The close is the tie, and the tie has a date.
When the month is closed we say so in one sentence. That sentence is what the return is allowed to stand on.
If you want the questions we ask before that sentence, read what a close asks.
