Portfolio / Expertise / Full-Cycle Accounting
Full-Cycle Accounting
Full-cycle accounting isn’t a sequence of tasks — it’s one connected story from the first journal entry to the published statement. I run it so the books balance by design, not by adjustment: reconciliation is built into the cycle, not bolted on at month-end. That’s how the close at AA Innovations went from 10 to 6 working days.
The Workflow — How I Approach It
Open clean
Reconcile the prior period’s balances before new activity touches the ledger. A close that starts dirty finishes dirty.
Record with support
Post every journal entry with a reason and backup, so nothing sits in the ledger without a story behind it.
Reconcile continuously
Run GL and subledger reconciliations daily and weekly — while discrepancies are small and cheap to fix.
Post the judgment entries
Accruals, prepaids, and deferrals handled as decisions with audit-ready support — not year-end afterthoughts.
Tie out before close
Subledgers to GL, GL to statements — line by line — before anything is called final.
Publish on the calendar
GAAP statements delivered on a fixed close calendar, every period, so leadership never waits on the numbers.
My Operating View — The 2 Cents
Accounting is a story. Every entry has a reason; a reconciliation that doesn’t balance is a story unfinished. My 2 cents: stop tweaking numbers to make them balance — trace why they didn’t. The reason is almost always the insight the business needs. And speed and accuracy are not a trade-off: automation and daily reconciliation buy you both.
What Worked & What Didn’t
What Worked
- Daily reconciliation caught discrepancies while they were small, not at month-end.
- Automating recurring entries and close templates cut the close from 10 to 6 working days.
- Backing every adjusting entry with support made audits rework-free.
What Didn’t
- Leaving reconciliation to month-end turned small gaps into big surprises.
- Forcing a balance by tweaking figures hid the real problem and came back later.
- Trusting raw data — a bad entry upstream reproduces itself everywhere.