The Month-End Routine That Takes Ninety Minutes

Businesses that have their finances under control are rarely the ones with the most sophisticated systems. They are the ones doing a small, dull routine on a predictable day.

Here is the version I recommend to owner-managed businesses. It takes about ninety minutes once it is a habit.

1. Reconcile the bank (30 minutes)

Every transaction matched, nothing left in suspense. The discipline is not the matching, it is refusing to leave anything unexplained. An unidentified payment from four months ago never becomes easier to identify.

2. Chase what is owed (20 minutes)

Run the aged receivables report and actually send the emails. Not "make a note to chase" — send them, in the same session. Most late payment is not refusal, it is that nobody asked.

3. Check three numbers against last month (15 minutes)

• Cash in the bank
• Money owed to you
• Money you owe

Not a full P&L. Three numbers, tracked monthly, on one line of a spreadsheet. The trend tells you more than any single month's report, and it takes a quarter of an hour.

4. File everything (25 minutes)

Receipts attached to transactions, invoices where your accountant can find them. This is the task that makes year-end cheap, and it is the one everyone skips because it has no immediate reward.

Why the fixed day matters

The routine works because it is scheduled, not because it is clever. Businesses that do this "when there is time" are the ones handing a shoebox to an accountant in April and paying for the privilege.

When to hand it over

Once the ninety minutes becomes four hours, you have crossed the line where a bookkeeper costs less than you do. A remote service such as RemoteBookeeper makes sense at that point — but hand over the reconciliation first and keep the receivables chase yourself for a while longer. Nobody chases your customers as effectively as you do.