Stop 4 of 9 · Weekly

The review checklist

Fifteen checks Claude runs on a closed month before a human looks, the exceptions report a reviewer can sign, and the four things the checklist cannot see.

What it is

Farida's practice closes twenty months in the first ten working days. The checklist has not changed in years, and it is still run out of somebody's head at nine at night. This stop moves the running of it to Claude and leaves the judging of it with a person.

The order matters. Claude runs fifteen checks against a closed month, writes an exceptions report, and stops. Nothing posts, nothing reclasses, no bank rule changes. A reviewer signs, or sends it back.

The fifteen checks

Ties and balances:

1. Every bank and card account reconciled to the statement with a nil difference.
2. Undeposited funds cleared, or every remaining item listed with its age.
3. Clearing and suspense accounts at zero, or every entry in them named.
4. Opening balance equity untouched since the file was set up.
5. Payroll liabilities agreeing to the payroll provider report for the month.

Revenue and cost:

6. Recorded sales agreeing to the platform and merchant payout reports.
7. Sales tax collected agreeing to sales tax payable.
8. Cost of sales moving with revenue, or the divergence written down.
9. Merchant and processor fees proportional to sales, with last month as the comparison.
10. Refunds and chargebacks posted in the month they cleared, not the month they were raised.

Discipline:

11. Nothing left uncategorised or sitting in Ask My Accountant.
12. No transaction dated after the close date.
13. Prepaid and accrual entries posted, and the schedules agreeing to the balances.
14. Fixed asset additions over the capitalisation threshold on the register.
15. Every question raised last month answered and recorded, or carried onto this month's list.

Using the QuickBooks Online connector on [client file name], read only, run my fifteen close checks against last month and return a table with three columns: check number, pass or fail or could not run, and the evidence. For a fail, give the transactions or balances with dates and amounts. For could not run, say exactly what was missing. Compare to the prior month wherever the check needs a comparison. Post nothing, reclass nothing, change no bank rule.

From that run, drop every pass and give me only the fails and the could-not-runs, sorted by dollars. For each one: what is wrong, the transactions behind it, the dollars, who I need an answer from, and the one thing that would close it. Then write three lines at the end: total exceptions, total dollars, and how this compares to the same client last month.

Given the fifteen checks above and what you could see in this file, list the ways this month could still be wrong and every check would still pass. Be specific to this client trade and the accounts they actually use. Do not reassure me, and do not propose fixes.

What the checklist cannot see

Four categories, every month, on every client:

• Revenue that was never recorded, because there is nothing in the file to disagree with.
• Cash that never reached a bank account, for the same reason.
• A vendor that does not exist, whose payments reconcile perfectly.
• Whether the classification is right for this client's trade, as opposed to internally consistent.

The first three are stop 5. The fourth is why a person still signs.

Mark stop 4 done