What the close asks you
.A close is a set of questions, not a speech about the year. We ask them in the order the bank will later confirm.
Which month do you already trust? That month is the floor. Everything after it is still open until the deposits, the card batches, and the payroll provider agree with it.
Which deposit is still unnamed? A card batch can post after the sale that earned it. The return uses the month the bank already matched, so we ask for the date the bank shows rather than the day the shop remembers as busy.
Is payroll still on the provider you run? We set payroll up there. The payday you already promised your crew stays on that same system. We do not run it, and we do not stand up a second payroll system next to yours.
The questions under the deposits
.An unmatched deposit is a question with a date on it. We want the invoice, the card batch, or the explanation, and we want the month it belongs to.
An uncategorized withdrawal is the same kind of question. If it is a personal draw, say so. If it is a vendor, name the vendor. The return cannot invent either one.
Sales tax is an address question before it is a rate question. Inside the city limits the slices are separate. The sale's address is confirmed before any one of those slices is entered.
Cross into Fort Bend or into Montgomery and the local row on a sale can change. We do not paste the city row onto that other address. We do not copy the city row onto an address that lives in another county.
March, and the month it changes
.A long stretch of March changes the month for hotels, restaurants, and anyone serving those weeks. The extra card deposits still have to be named. We ask whether those extra card deposits belong to March or to the month the bank already matched. A packed week does not move a deposit into a month the bank has not stood behind.
Livestock week can stuff the card batches. The month still closes only when the bank, the batches, and the payroll provider agree. If the last trusted month is February, March stays open until the bank, the batches, and the payroll provider tell the same story.
We write the questions down so the next month does not inherit them. A question that survives two closes is a hole, and the return should not step over a hole.
Read how a single month gets from open to closed when you want the sequence rather than the questions.
What you can send before the call
.Bank activity for the open months, the newest month you already trust, and a short payroll note are enough to start. A messy year can still be the start of the conversation.
Name the piece that will not tie, the bank, the card batches, or payroll. A year described only as behind gives us no month to close.
We will tell you if the honest next step is to wait. Waiting is part of the work when the month is not ready for the return.
How a question gets marked done
.A question is done when the bank line and your explanation name the same month. Until that happens, the question stays on the list we send back to you.
Changing a category in the file does not finish the question. The category follows the explanation, and the explanation follows the deposit that cleared.
If the shop was busy after dark and the card batch posted the next morning, write the morning. The crowd you remember is not the month the return will use.
A wage question sits apart from a sales question. Money that never reached the payroll provider is not a wage the return can carry, even in a month the shop felt full.
Send the open questions before the call if you have them. A short named list is faster than a year described only as behind.
When every question on one month has an answer the bank agrees with, that month can leave the open pile. The following month starts with its own list, not with leftovers.
Owners sometimes want the return dated while questions are still open. Those questions stay written on the note we send back until the bank and the explanation name the same month.
The property list and the franchise report ask different questions later in the spring. Both of them still depend on these answers, which is why the close is the first page in this set.
