If you want to close your Accounting Books faster, you could do a "Fast Close".

A "Fast Close" is just a lean Procedure by which you streamline your Closing. It takes out the hassles and usually you save time, which you could better invest in other things.

So here is a brief procedure about what you need to do for a Fast Close:

List all Closing Tasks
First of all, you need to know what you have to do. So it is important to write down everything you normally do to close your books. List everything, even if it is just about updating a file, a document or handing over any information.


Responsibilities
Who is responsible for which task. As you now have a list of all tasks, you could hand over the responsibility for each task to the right person. This doesn't need only to be people from the Accounting Department. Some tasks may be performed by other Departments of your company. If you are the only person in your business, then it's all your own responsibility.


Check Dependencies
This is most important to streamline your closing process. Find out which task depends on another one. If the previous task isn't completed the depending task could not be done as well. When doing this right, you could save a lot of time.


Check for unnecessary Tasks
While you have checked the dependencies of tasks, you might stumbled upon the one or the other unnecessary task. What are these? Well, mostly these are tasks where you fill in information a second time, which you already entered somewhere else. Find ways to do such things only one time. Furthermore, these could be just Reports you are preparing, which nobody will ever have a look to. Ask the receiver, if the Report could be done later or if it could be omitted.


Establish Deadlines
Establishing Deadlines is at least as important as to check dependencies of tasks. Use Date and Time for a Deadline. If information are not
available on time, ask for them. With the time most people get familiar with the deadlines and will provide information on time.


So, Fast Close seems to be an easy thing to do, isn't it? Well, it normally is for small and medium sized businesses with less than 50 tasks for a month-end closing. But it could be tedious with more than 100 tasks. And if your business is very complex or growing fast, you might see a Closing Schedule with more the 300 tasks, but then you really have a big business.

Most importantly, you need to improve the process of Fast Close month by month. You will find more and more things you could automate or standardize.

All that will save you time, which you could invest in other things on your agenda. Have fun.

If you don't like to go through the hassle to build a Closing Schedule, just register as a BASIS-Member (see link below) and download the free Template from Tools in the Download-Area. This will get you started in just a Minute.

Business-Management

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