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Accounts Payable Month-End Checklist
Free GetTheDocs finance resource. Use this practical checklist as a starting point for your organisation's AP close process. Adapt the timing, owners and approval levels to your policies.
1. Define the close
- Confirm the reporting entity, ledger, period-end date, responsible preparer and independent reviewer.
- Agree the cutoff for invoice entry, credit notes, receipt processing and payment posting.
- Record source reports, extraction times and the opening AP control balance.
2. Complete transaction checks
- Identify invoices received but not entered, duplicates, unmatched purchase orders, and items awaiting approvals.
- Reconcile supplier credit notes, reversals and partial payments to the related invoices.
- Review goods received but not invoiced and invoices received without an accepted receipt, where relevant.
- Verify manual journals, payment reversals and clearing-account entries have supporting explanations.
3. Reconcile and investigate
- Reconcile the aged AP subledger to the general ledger by entity, currency and closing date.
- Investigate reconciling items, unusual debit balances, stale credits and aged unresolved supplier differences.
- Confirm foreign-currency translation rates and separately identify FX differences where applicable.
- Check whether post-cutoff transactions belong in the reporting period and document any adjustments.
4. Prepare management outputs
- Summarise open AP, overdue exposure, unresolved exceptions and major reconciling items.
- Assign every unresolved issue to an owner with a due date and evidence reference.
- Keep a dated exception register rather than deleting flagged transactions.
5. Close and approve
- Confirm preparer name, completion date, source reports and reconciliation totals.
- Require review by someone independent of preparation where your control design requires it.
- Record the review decision and outstanding items; do not label the period fully clear when material exceptions remain.
Control reminder: A dashboard does not authorize a payment, supplier banking change or financial close. Follow your organisation's approval procedures.
AP subledger to general ledger: worked example
Fictional educational example, not a workbook result. Compare the same entity, currency, reporting date and balance convention. Here, both totals are shown as positive liabilities.
The AP subledger totals USD 24,800 and the general-ledger AP control account totals USD 25,000. The control account exceeds the subledger by 25,000 − 24,800 = USD 200.
Suppose the supporting journal report identifies a USD 200 manual credit posted directly to the control account. This may explain the bridge: 24,800 + 200 = 25,000. Verify that journal's purpose, source, period and approval. Do not simply edit the subledger or write off the difference to make the totals agree.
What evidence should remain after review?
- Dated source reports with matching entity, currency and cutoff.
- The signed reconciliation bridge and supporting journal reference.
- The preparer's explanation, independent review and any approved follow-up.
- Open exceptions with owners and due dates, even if the totals agree.
What if the balances agree but supplier items remain open?
Agreement between control totals does not resolve every supplier dispute, credit allocation or missing invoice. Keep those investigations visible and distinguish a reconciled control total from a fully resolved close.
Continue with the supplier reconciliation worked example and the GRNI calculation and investigation examples.
Put this review into practice
For an Excel workflow that supports this review, explore the relevant GetTheDocs system and its requirements. Choose the workbook only if its inputs and review steps fit your team. Browse all free finance resources.