Want to make your End of Year Close less of a drama?

What is the End of Year Close process?

The EoY close involves reviewing, reconciling, and verifying that all your financial transactions and every aspect of the company's ledgers from the past fiscal year add up. This includes calculating your business expenses, income and revenue, investments and assets, equity, and more.

There are eight core steps to closing the books (these apply equally to end-of-month or year!)

1. Identifying transactions
2. Recording transactions in a journal
3. Posting to the general ledger
4. Preparing an unadjusted trial balance
5. Reconciling debits and credit
6. Creating adjusting journal entries
7. Running an adjusted trial balance and financial statements
8. Closing the books to reset your income statement accounts to zero and lock in balance sheet accounts

If you have multiple subsidiaries, there's a bit more to do - consolidating financials, managing intercompany eliminations, generating footnotes and disclosures for external reporting, and applying appropriate standards.

It's a lot of work and typically takes at least eight weeks of preparation. In New Zealand and Australia, EoY close often falls on 31 March or 30 June. Getting it right is essential for CFO’s and stakeholders alike.

Why is EoY close still a challenge?

Even the most experienced finance teams can feel the pressure. EoY close can quickly become overwhelming due to:

1. Too much work, Not enough people! When your team lacks resources or relies on manual processes, legacy batch systems and paper-based documents everything slows down. Without a continuous close process, the negative impact on accounting staff is significant, not just because the chance of errors goes up, but sometimes important steps get skipped.
2. Speed vs. Accuracy. The pressure to close fast often competes with the need to close right. This tension increases the risk of shortcuts, mistakes and omissions.
3. Missing or misplaced documents? Invoices, receipts and supporting documentation often go missing. Duplicate data, unrecorded payments, simple typos, miscalculations, and finding and resolving incorrect or incomplete data cause delays – and stress.
4. Manual data entry: Why it slows you down. Spreadsheets still dominate, but data entry is time-consuming and error prone. Even the most organised person can struggle with processing large piles of paperwork when faced with high-pressure deadlines and repetitive tasks. The more manual the process, the greater the risk of mistakes.
5. Inefficient communications. Ask any accountant or accounts team member what it's like to chase employees for missing documentation or explain specific transactions. Email follow-ups, delays and confusion all compound when the EoY deadline looms.
6. Disconnected systems: The hidden EoY Bottleneck. When your data is spread across multiple platforms, it's more challenging to access and verify the information needed for a fast and accurate EoY close. It becomes even harder when those systems aren’t integrated.
7. Multi-entity, multi country complexity. Different currencies, systems and standards make the close system exponentially more difficult. Inconsistent chart of accounts or formatting disparities cause delays in producing consolidated financial statements.
8. Remote and hybrid team. The shift to remote and hybrid work post-pandemic adds new layers of complexity to coordination, data access and data hygiene.

How can the EoY close process be improved?

Here is how to reduce stress, save time and improve the quality of your EoY close.

1. Identify and remove inefficiencies. Start by identifying where the delays and errors have crept in. Transition away from manual, paper-based workflows and towards automated processes. For instance, request that employees and suppliers submit expenses and invoices electronically in formats that feed directly into your accounting system!

2. Standardise everything! Create and maintain standard operating procedures (SOPs) that document the ideal EoY close process. As part of an SOP, allocate tasks, set internal deadlines and make checklists to ensure consistency and compliance. This will reduce the margin for error, streamline processes, save time, and improve team coordination.

3. Adopt a continuous accounting. Spread the workload throughout the year. Regularly post journal entries and reconcile accounts monthly reduce the EoY workload.

4. Improve access to data. Give your accounting team direct (and secure) access to systems that store key financial data. Whether it’s sales, HR, procurement or logistics, having real time data access is critical.

Why a modern ERP (like NetSuite) changes everything

Cloud based ERP solutions can help you:

• Consolidate data from multiple entities, locations, and systems
• Automate recurring, error-prone tasks like reconciliation and journal entries
• Provide a single source of financial truth across your organisation
• Reduce manual adjustments during consolidation
• Enable real-time reporting and faster close cycles
• Automatically handle multi-book accounting, currencies, and tax rules

At Fusion5, we’ve helped over 540 businesses modernise their accounting processes with NetSuite. From reducing late nights and headaches to improving audit readiness and data accuracy, the impact is real.

Balance the books beautifully

Ageing accounting technology and disjointed processes only add stress to your accounts or finance team.

If the time has come to make a step-change in how you improve your EoY close then we have great news: a modern, cloud-based ERP can make the entire task so much easier you’ll be wondering why you didn’t make the change sooner.

Investing in the right ERP system can reduce your EoY costs, free up your team, and improve the quality and timeliness of your financial statements. No more embarrassing post-close revisions. No more stress. Just clarity, compliance, and control.

Ready to start the new financial year with your reputation intact?